


Insinuations

by Ginger_Squirrel, Steppenkatze



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Age Difference, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Drama, Drug Use, F/M, Family Drama, Flirting, Happy Ending, Heart Disease, Hurt/Comfort, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Modern AU, Out of Character, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Songfic, Teacher-Student Relationship, Translation from Russian, Unhealthy Relationships, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-07 23:03:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 59,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21225710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginger_Squirrel/pseuds/Ginger_Squirrel, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steppenkatze/pseuds/Steppenkatze
Summary: "Look at the neighbor on the left, look at the neighbor on the right. Be aware, the two of you will drop out". Rey Teedo has been repeating this mantra for five years of study at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hitting books eagerly for her glimmering future. And what could have gone wrong? Hell, everything! How to survive in the final academic year? Hah, this mission seems impossible.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Инсинуации](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25399831) by [Ginger_Squirrel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginger_Squirrel/pseuds/Ginger_Squirrel). 

> This story was written by me in russian and kindly translated by Steppenkatze. We hope you find it interesting.

[ ](https://sun1-26.userapi.com/rQaI2uHZ9E4Iq8ef-rC7vTGvhUK4pYGDkPx_ag/DOw1HFPMpbU.jpg)

The purpose of an insinuation is to undermine the trust in the object in the listeners and readers. Implications, therefore, to his arguments or behavior. An insinuation is always a speech act, and the goal is not the character of the opponent's rally, but the desire to defame it in the eyes of others. It performed disguised, secretly, in several stages. It is often difficult to distinguish from the truth. The insinuation always directs against a specific individual.

** Chapter 1**

Rey Teedo opened her eyes and stretched out. Warm sun rays were making their way through the curtains, swaying from the breeze, the usual noise of morning Boston was coming outside. A small second bedroom in a tiny apartment, located in a not very prosperous area, was filled with warmth and freshness. Somewhere outside the window, children were shouting, and someone was cursing the selective ghetto naughty words with a Vietnamese accent, trucks were sailing right through and past the appendix of the streets now and then. Life in the old Dorchester was always so noisy, a little dirty, but not dull and annoying, especially in the dark. The immediate proximity to a railway made its presence felt by the rattling of glass in the windows and by endless dust, flying all year round. Her last summer in this city is winding down. One year, and she will finally say "arrivederci" to this apartment, the university and inadequate neighbors who, during the day, plugged her being on homework, and at night - sleep. There was only one day left before the final race to the desired diploma began. Master program is on its last legs, Rey is in a flutter of expectation for job offers. Only the graduation paper remained, and she is ready to fly into the arms of this brave new world.

No doubt, Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the best thing ever that could happen to her in her life. Someone would say: Rey was incredibly lucky to get there, but she knew that it wasn't a question of luck: there would have been no ideally passed final tests, neither won academic competitions nor diplomas for participation in contests. All these small, carefully accumulated victories helped her obtain higher education for free. Nearly. The university has paid for it, but she is paying the fare by slave labor. "You always have to pay a piper" - Rey Teedo had never believed in free lunch since the age of three. Her entire life could be called anything, but not ordinary. Upshot the things, a newborn baby, whom its mother sold for a dose of heroin, should have died twenty-three years ago, but Rey was lucky. And wasn’t it a miracle? Only cause of Uncle Unkar. She lucked out to come at the Unkar Plutt himself, who, as he once said, could act no otherwise. The old jiboney was too kind and pious to let an innocent baby die, get into slavery to his counterparts, or just be sold out for organs' transplantation. She was found on Christmas Eve in a wad of blood-stained blankets on some abandoned construction site, where several heads of criminal gangs gathered. Every respecting criminal authority believed women and children were sacred, to which no one has the right to invade. That's why even the bastard of a needle freak, God knows, who was a father, had to survive. Plutt sincerely believed that in the great beyond it would count towards his recognition, like a good deed is never lost, accomplished between the shootings and the elimination of competitors, and immediately identified his new acquisition in the Catholic boarding school at the Abbey of Saint Neema near Boston. The shelter was located in the small town of Jakku and was under the protection of Unkar himself, both spiritually and financially. It was Plutt who gave Rey a name that distinguished the girl from all the other novices of the monastery. Deciding to name the baby in honor of the only woman he loved, Unkar endured not one round of confrontation with Revered Mother Katharina - she demanded a more traditional name for a girl. But her savior seemed to feel that the girl was not destined to become a nun.

Rey became his favorite. No question about it, the story of her salvation inspired the older man that he doted the soul in a small tender rascal. Pickle, cheerful, sparkly - she pleased him with her innocent children's tricks, about that, during regular visits, Mother Agnes scrupulously reported.

The old thug only laughed and ruffled the hair of the hushed child. AND at that time, nobody was disturbed by Rey's strange pallor or quick fatigue, nor the nagging pains that she periodically used to complain about. Finally, monastic life, with its endless fasts, hadn’t shown anyone to a great advantage yet.

Despite the strict charter and ascetic way of life, in their small boarding school, that was located in the old building of the 19th century, love and warmth reigned. No pupil's birthday was without a festive cake with berries and small, but still an ideal for the birthday-child gift. Most often, this turned out to be some trinket, but for the orphanage children, such trifles were within their own universe. And when once a passionate love arose in Rey for an old computer that stood in the room, mother Agnes and sister Maria didn’t remain indifferent. They begged the superior to give the child permission to attend computer courses, and they were immediately paid by Unkar Plutt for his little lustrous Rey. And since then, twice a week, she and one of the sisters drove to the other end of the city in an old pickup. But then, she was not disturbed by such inconvenience. She saw another world and did not want to return from there. Not confused by the sidelong glances of the boys, snubbing their noses dismissively upon seeing the thin little girl in a standard dress of pupils boarding. Not upset even by openly prejudiced attitude of her teacher. She was so delighted with the discovered universe of digital opportunities, that she didn't pay any attention to these annoying little things.

As time went on, pretty soon it turned out that Rey was not only capable of fast learning but also going one step ahead of the rest. While everyone was trying to solve some tricky task, using standard ways, a quiet orphan girl, biting her child-chubby plump lower lip, suggested an unexpected approach. And even if the lines of the code could not always embody all the ideas that were spinning in her head, it helped win the respect of the teacher and then the boys. Their friendship with spooky Finn, the wild fanatic of everything that is soldered, lasted to this day. O'Nealley could sit for hours over comparative tables of the characteristics of any printed circuit board, and then make from heaps of rubbish and a couple of loud expletives, a perfect converter current. They were both introverted, lonely, and infinitely in love with programming. Ray and Finn stuck together, sometimes falling into outright rebellion. A dime thousands of virus programs were written by them during their studies at a small computer studio, of personal pages and accounts had suffered in social networks of their buddies, of times the friends came across on the next trick.

But they kept the chin up and only leered at each other and demonstrated repentance look, while being given the hairdryer treatment.

They quickly became more than just friends — withdrawn and distrustful by nature - Rey and Finn turned out to be attorneys in each other's personal affairs. Brother and sister. Identical twins generated by the Great Matrix. At sixteen he cheered her up after unrequited love, and at seventeen the girl became the first and for a long time, the only one who knew about her friend's gay story. Being a black gay from devout family is another test for a shy teenager. The friends went together like salt and pepper. Still, their relationship remained so frankly related that no one, even Mother Agnes, could see anything wrong with that for a strict framework Catholic student. No one was surprised that bosom buddies decided to try to enter the Mecca for all computer scientists in the country - Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And now, after almost six years, their training was nearly winding up. Two semesters, final tests and graduation paper detached them from the finish of the academic race.

Suddenly, outside, a tremendous roar of a car went off, blasting past, following by choicest swearwords of neighbors downstairs, and this turned Rey back of her memories to reality. She glanced at the wall; the clock showed half-past ten in the morning. Yesterday's shift at Uncle Unkar's club was hurry-scurry, and she managed to get home only long after midnight. Stretching out again, she noted that her three-working-day tired legs had never even relaxed at all during the night. But it was OK, only 24 hours more do so: Rose would be back from vacation, and her usual schedule would again be with her.

Rey got out of bed, turned on the local radio on her MacBook, and, accompanied by Queen and David Bowie's eternal hit, headed for the shower. She promised her uncle to come early today and deal with piles of paper that already completely covered the table in his office. One day she helped Unkar Plutt hush one small business and by that deserved boundless trust allowing to delve into all the crafty twists and turns of black and white accounting. Rey grinned, thinking what Mother Agnes would say if she knew about the affairs of her alumna. Well... Maybe she knew because she was perfectly aware of who was considered to be a fairy godfather of their boarding school.

_"... Pressure pushing down on me_

_Pressing down on you, no man ask for_

_Under pressure that burns a building down_

_Splits a family in two_

_Puts people on streets ... "*_

The slamming of the doors and the clicking of the closing lock, were heard when she brushed her wet hair - the only beautiful feature in her appearance. If you, of course, are not into croopies. Too small, too thin, too pale - she considered her long thick chestnut curls to be her the only treasure. Unkar said that she had got beautiful eyes, but her uncle had his skin in the game, that is why Rey took his enthusiasm with a heavy dose of skepticism.

“Oh my god! Are you home?” Finn's yell shouted down the music streaming from the speakers. She just shook her head, leaving the bathroom and turning off the sound.

“No, it's just the specter of Hamlet's father decided to dance to the latest big tune,” her sarcastic response caused a smile on her friend's face. “I did not expect you before tomorrow night. Has something happened? How are your parents?”

“Everything is fine,” having thrown off his down at heel sneakers in the corner, he passed by shuffling barefoot in the direction of the refrigerator, opened the door, and grimaced. “Is there anything to have a little nosh, woman?”

Rey braced for a moment, hands on her hips.

“FN-2187,” she called him by his permanent network nickname, “if I have female secret parts, it does not mean I have to slave over a hot stove for the sake of your stomach. Moreover, you have got Arnold for such stuff”.

“Well, just admit that for these six years you haven't learned to cook.”

Finn grinned and plopped down on the sofa with a packet of chips, that the bastard had hidden from her again somewhere as a stashy-slushy fund. She couldn’t take a lot of salt, and he was fully aware of it. He also knew that Rey could not resist Pringles. They have been sharing this apartment for five years now since the very first day the order on the compulsory residence of freshman-year students in dormitory buildings of the campus had given over. And such conversation, just with minor changes, used to repeat with enviable regularity all these years, as well as the endlessly stashed yummies. No, Rey, trying to find in herself at least one of authentic feminine sides and honestly experimented with cooking. But after using a fire extinguisher and repainting the ceiling, she dropped it.

The landlord did not kick them out only because of his total why-bother-attitude. Hell with that, she'd freelance to buy a vegan burger than burn out the apartment thoroughly.

“I don't deny it,” Rey returned to brushing of her almost-dried hair.

“So, what are you doing here? There is a whole day before the semester starts”.

Finn's slow distraction and his total inability to keep track of his schedule, have already become inside jokes too. In their hodgepodge, Rey kept up with the classes, time-tables and other things that required concentration and responsibility, and Finn had an eye on her.

"Phasma sent a message," he grimaced. “She says, Hux wants to see me. I need to discuss my graduation work”.

Rey frowned. They both were writing their diplomas under the guidance of professor Armitage Hux. And since he has always been unavailable, appearing at some conferences and scientific exhibitions, all supervised graduates were squeezed into his tight schedule by Phasma, a PhD-student. This blond-haired blue-eyed Valkyrie with an angelic face possessed impressive growth and nasty temper. Sometimes it seemed that Professor Hux himself was afraid of her.

“Strange, she didn't tell me anything...”

“Oh, calm down,” Finn interrupted her, rolling his eyes and brushing off the crumbs from his hands. Right on the sofa! “You and Hux have been fawning over your project since your third year. What exactly are you going to discuss with him?”

Sit and write your code. And we have a real problem here, printed circuit boards, ordered three month ago, arrived defective, and there is no time to make up new ones.

“So what is there to do?” Rey gasped, sitting next to the friend and sneakly stretching out her hand to the carton pack of Pringles. It didn't work.

“Well, either partially change the circuit itself based on what we have, or acid-etch...”

“Stone Age.”

“Honey, the stone age is a BASIC”, Finn said with preaching tone. “BUT etching is timeless classics.”

“That’s where I could be offended now, but there is no time.”

Rey got up, picking up the jacket from the couch and stuffing it in her bag. The weather in Boston liked to play "catch me, fog," to say nothing of the temperature drops during the day. Such a climate was definitely not for them, Rey was always cold and Finn always failed to buy new sneakers on time.

“Are you at Plutt’s tonight?”

“Yes,” she nodded, looking thoughtfully around the living room in case she had forgotten something.

“Oh, well, you will catch up on your sleep tomorrow” - Finn also rose and dragged along to the fridge again, with no abandoned hope to find something edible.

"Alas, my friend, I'm back in harness tomorrow from early morning class," Rey finally found her wireless headset under a crop of cardiac waveforms. It didn’t escape her friend's sight.

“Have you revisited the doctor?” Finn's voice was quiet and worried. Ray winced. She hated it when he started dragging out her problem, and a friend hated indeed when something was swept under the rug from him.

“Yep,” she said, a little more harshly than she should have, in the hope that the conversation would stop there. But no way!

“Pain again?” and again, those worried eyes.

“Nothing serious,” she shook her head, trying to look as cheerfully as possible. By the same token, she might tell the truth, Rey wasn't able to bluff, she never did, especially when Finn was concerned. The guy pursed his lips and looked at her angrily making her sigh and give up. As usual. “Just prescribed the next pill.”

“Stronger,” it was a statement. He crossed his arms over his chest, looking at her point-blank. How such glances drove her mad!

“I would not say...” she pulled on her uniform skirt and twisted up her hair in a knotted bundle.

“So, the previous ones were not effective enough?”

“Finn, choosing drugs is not being done with a wave of a wand. My diagnosis one has to look for workarounds.”

“So, anyway, pain came back again.”

Rey sighed. And why is she trying to deny it every time? Finn saw all her heart attacks; he drove her to hospital when it was especially serious. Well, last year, they called an ambulance more often than in her entire life.

“It did.”

“It seems to me that your doctors are just wasting time,” he was alarmed beyond measure, but Rey just rolled her eyes.

“You know full well I have no money for the surgery. It is a good job that I work way through the insurance and prescribed medications , and that only thanks to Plutt.”

“You could ask him...”

“No!” Rey snapped. “He has already done enough for me and I don’t want to drain his wallet even more. You know, the club doesn’t pay well . And besides Unkar is as old as Methusalem ... I'm fine, really.”

  
She smiled at her friend, but he had grave doubts about all of it.

“Your night duty does not step up your health.”

“Insurance, drugs, apartment... Should I proceed?” Rey raised an eyebrow ironically. Finn sighed only, then he came closein the blink of an eye and gave her a squeeze.

“Silly arrogant woman,” he murmured.

“Sentimental gayboy ”.

  
Her friend gave a chuckle, letting her go. Rey also smiled, gazing fondly at Finn.

  
“Do not worry, everything will be fine with me. And now, Great Warden, can I go to work?”

“Buzz off,” he gave a wave of one hand, taking the pan in his another. It is a real catch, but her friend could compete for prizes places a best chief, standing on his head, if not of America, then at least of Massachusetts for sure.

  
“Come off it! Just order in,” she couldn’t stand it, watching how he warily felt tomatoes as old stock in the fridge. Their quality raised a doubt even on the day of purchase, but they were sold for a discount, so Rey didn’t have ecological properties of them on her mind.

“You don't know thing one about home cooking.”

“Oh, let alone!” Rey muttered, left the flat and turned on the music.

"... _through the sorrow all through our splendor  
Don't take off at my innuendo ... "**_

The first-class nightclub "Takodana" was located in the most fashionably upscale area of the city, not far from posh Back Bay. Government head honcho, the Boston grandest in society, beau monde, and silver-spoon-in-the-mouth kids of today’s deep pockets were frequent visitors at Unkar Plutt. It has always been beating the crowd off with the stick, and today’s Sunday evening has been moving in a groove as usual. Some people were dancing to a tune of modern rhythm on the dance floor, others preferred to hit the high spots with their posse, sitting at separate tables on soft sofas.

The shimmering light of spots refracted and twisted in a crawling fog of screening smoke. Rey went to the bar, gesturing Maz to pour her water, when she gets off. Native of Jamaica, who has already forgotten the marine blue color of her homeland, nodded and returned to mix another stunning cocktail. She has become a legend cause of her skills, and the story has it that she has begun her career at age of nine. Maz Kanata was the goddess of hot spirits and “explosive” drinks, smoked odd flavored tobacco and was in to green apples. Sometimes Rey regretted that she was never fated to have firsthand knowledge about Maz’ high level of skill, but oftentimes she was furiously worked up about compassionate sights of every person who was on to her problem. Yes, heart disease problem. And as follows, a lot of restrictions. But for God's sake, she is not going to die here and now!

Rey shook her head, snapping out of her thoughts and returning to her duties. The job as the club hostess implied the ability to solve any issues quickly with both customers and suppliers. Stellar politeness mastery, damn high tolerance for stress and soul in patience, like thermonuclear fuel of the Sun. She was able to bring a presumptuous huckster down a peg calmly, and, smiling sweetly, to deliver in-for-a-treat-visitor into hands of brave policemen. And now one of posse demanded her close attention.

  
They were located a few tables away from her in the most quiet, out-of-the-way corner of the club, if such a word was applicable to a dance “establishment”. A young man was seated, surrounded by two cutesie hussies, unbuttoned on three buttons snow-white shirt glowed in the ultraviolet rays of the night lanterns. His unusual face features couldn’t help but engross Rey’s attention: big nose, set mouth which lips curled in a forbearing smile right along and, all of sudden, heavy look. He was telling something, shoving easily his black hair back, that used to fell to his eyes from time to time, and gesticulating wildly. His escort was trilling with unnatural laughter, every time moving closer and closer to him, until both girls hung on him altogether. Rey frowned. The guests haven’t crossed the border of morality yet and, therefore, haven’t broken the rules of the club, but they were on track to it.

Even from her seat she saw a demonstratively vicious expression on his face with that the man looked every of his interlocutress over. However, their necklines deserved much more attention than this macho rendered them. The girls smiled vulgarly in response with rouged mouths and they dived their hands under the collar of his shirt, holding their sharp claws on the in the shadow darkening skin. Of course, in good conscience, it must be admitted that this jackass was handsome, moreover, handsome by his own distinctive sightliness, much less compliant with consensual canons of beauty. And Rey did not deny that he unveiled as doan, all in all, she has been just a woman. It all seemed to point to that he was acutely aware of it, availing his charm. Rey had no doubt that the man in front of her was definitely a dumbass. Imperious look, attitude of confidence, and finally, the expression of being full of conceit on his face make it clear that this man was a personality of possessiveness and egocentric by nature. Such features were met separately by anyone who strays of ahead the VIP zone of the club, but now all that traits cocktail tended to be outright here ... H-mm, bingo!

“Watching?” a voice of Unkar

Plutt behind her made her jump. Rey turned around and noticed the old German’s serious gaze aimed at the same table, that she kept an eye out just a minute ago.

“I see so as nothing happens off the wall ...” she nodded.

Unkar was silent for a while, chewing his thick lower lip absent-minded. Then unusual  
seriously uttered:

“Whatever happens, I highly recommend you not to face off against him or enter into a dialog with him.”

Rey stared at her uncle in surprise.

“Why would I do this ? If they cross the line, Arthur will handle with them. After all, he is a club bouncer here, not me.”

Suddenly, Plutt put his hand on her shoulder, forcing her to turn back sideward the hot-botton-issue company.

“Just look very carefully, Rey,” he began, having a word in her ear and shouting above the dance music. “I met enough of motley crew in my entire life, and really understand how to see things in people. Remember, people like this guy can ruin any life once and for all. They have no consideration for anyone, override everybody and respect only opinion of their own. The mainstay of their high-off-life is not sex, drugs or alcohol, no, they steer clear all these roturier manners and entertainment. Subtle manipulating with people’s emotions, indignity beyond the admiration, pressure, total control turn them on, encourage to play with their victims. Money serves as a pass to the world of their evil habits and other people’snightmares. And therefore you can’t do anything, but they get the almighty power. Be careful, Rey, and never ever get mixed up with such a person.”

He paused, slightly gripping her shoulder with his plump fingers.

“I understand what you mean”, she nodded, watching how the subject of matter called the waiter with an elegant, pretentiously lazy gesture and ordered another whack of alcohol. She wondered how much he had already drunk and whether it was time to call Arthur to kick out the glassy-eyed guest? Just to be on the safe side. In the meantime, Maz finally offered her long-awaited glass of water. Rey took a sip, thinking about what Plutt just said.

“Thank you for worrying about and taking care of me, I solemnly swear never to mess with bad boys. But still, I don’t think I’m off the radar of such personalities. There is nothing attractive in me: no beauty, no money, no business cutouts. Only prolixity and terrible character, I'm afraid,” Rey smiled defiantly “It would be better for them to run away from me”.

But Unkar had none of it, he continued to observe closely his unwelcome guest, still squeezing the girl's shoulder. His pasty face expressed extreme anxiety, and then anger, when he heard her last words.

“Stop cracking wicked jokes!” Plutt put her down unexpectedly, and there was something in his a voice that made her listen to. “Now it seems to you that he is drunk. Ha! If you were more attentive, you would notice that the guy hadn’t even touched his whiskey. It is a game, Rey. Double, triple ... yes, only he knows how many layers are over his true motivation. And, it seems, our guest is ready for hunting. He’s been looking at you, since the moment he spotted you in the crowd”.

Rey shuddered at his words and glanced again at the subject of their discussion. That one just whispered something into the ear of the blonde, who pressed close against him.

“What made you think that?” She murmured and felt how the anxiety of her swore uncle  
prepossessed her too. “I hadn’t noticed anything.”

“Of course, you hadn’t. You shouldn't have noticed anything while he’s “evaluating” you, he is trying to decide now whether the cake is worth the candle”.

“Am I a commodity to be browsed like in a shop window?” the wave of anger washed over Rey, and she gave a black look to her glass of water.

“I'm afraid, but you are,” Unkar sighed. “For people like him, we are all a commodity”.

He wanted to say something else, but his cell phone call distracted him. Plutt motioned her he’d walk away for a few minutes, Rey only nodded, continuing to ponder what she just heard. She wasn’t born yesterday to be amazed at the existence of such people like this visitor. Moreover, a lot of creeps dropped in on the club, and things did happen. Eliteyouth could pull a trick, though this asshole obviously stood two or even three steps higher than any of pampered children of top officials. She had barely seen Unkar so excited and fearful until that evening, and he had never made such conversations before. Well, if the old mafia kingpin found it necessary to warn her, then she would have been certainly very careful. Even though she did not believe in increased focus on her plain-living person. Maybe Plutt was just looming something in the semi-darkness and cigarette smoke in the room. Rey drank the rest of the water at one gulp, and leaned over the bar, siding the glass to a sink. It was time to work, and she had already hung around in the hall for too long.

  
While leaving, she shot a glare at the frivolous company and felt her heart gave a leap with disquiet. As it were a slow-motion picture, Rey watched as the man was turning his head in the flickering light of the spotlights, and looking thoughtfully and steadily at her. Her mouth was ash-dry and she felt mesmerized by him, as if he were a master of hypnotic trance. It seemed they looked at each other for eternity, before she managed to break the eye contact, having mustered up her all will power against all the odds. Turning round, Rey headed into the hall, trying to get the stranger out of her head as soon as possible. Any thoughts of attractive men, cock-smitten chicks and preventions of Unkar were effaced from her memory by referral tasks.

  
Even she wasn’t able to think about so many things at one time and take on “board” an assembly of Midori Melon liqueur and Absinthe that were delivered tonight. And besides she had to fall out with a driver, who managed to crush the half of energy shots in boxes in an unknown way. So, at the end of the shift, Rey’s head was analogous to a table land with geysers, where thoughts exploded painfully and chaotically. In predawn hours, she was standing run-down in the parking lot in front of the club, where a lot of cars of the late visitors were located.

Snapping a pill of painkiller and jostling everything in her bag in search of a bottle of mineral water, Rey swore quietly, palm pressed against some sharp pin on the bottom. One day, she will clean up this mess! Scout's honour! Of course, she could return to the club for water, while Maz has not closed the club bar yet, recording stock of new arrived alcohol, but a taxi should have come at any minute. Finally she fished out a plastic container and drank her fill with pleasure. Autumn cool air braced up and got under thin jacket, making shiver with cold. The taxi was delayed and Rey dived into her bag for the checking time on her phone.

“I can give you a lift,” a man’s voice sounded behind her. She froze almost sure whom she sees if she turns. Exhaling sharply, Rey made pretend not to understand who the words were spoken to, and returned to the excavations in her bag. But there’s no stopping him. “It’s pretty rude to stand with your back to your speaking partner.”

Rey pursed her lips, restraining an impulse to give a boorish reply, got out the damned smartphone and then turned. And for sure she became numb: an improbable sight met her gaze: in one parking space, there was the most incredible car she’d ever seen. Dull black, incredibly “lean”, with a predatory design on the verge of absurdity and perfection at the same time. That attacked with glamour, speed and money. Two doors were open up, reminding the wings of a sea gull, or a never-before-seen creature. Certainly, the car complied with the spirit of its owner, who was leaning on its huge hood. And both were absolutely gorgeous.

Rey didn’t guess wrongly. A man from the club, lost somewhere his ladybirds, stretched out his long legs, casually putting his hands in his pockets, and settled more comfortable on the monstrous nose of the car. Dawn light imposed unnatural shadows, making his face seem somehow hard/ abrasive. Rey swallowed a lump, noticing distantly, how hisglance wandered on her body. No! What an asshole, huh! She tossed her head in pride.

“Thank you, but my taxi is here at any minute”, - she answered as calm as possible.

“It is rumoured to, that there is the largest number of perverts among taxi drivers,” the man said in a drawling manner, and his eyes were overwatching her reaction suspiciously attentive. “Not afraid?”

Rey thought if it was someone to be afraid of, that was definitely him. Unkar was one hundred per cent right, the sense of danger hung thick in the air around this person. But damn it, he challenged her, and her rebellious nature could not just ignore it. She looked at her companion ironically.

“We have to be frightened of ourselves, and otherwise I have got a stun gun”.

He clearly intended to say something, but at that moment a white Boston taxi car finally rolled up. So Rey turned around and dropped:

“Thank you very much for your care, however, I am able to handle it by myself.”

Flopping down in the seat, she must have slammed the door too hard and the whole way home she cursed herself on all that was holy for having entered into a conversation with this... with this. Rey even found it difficult to find a definition for such a person. Never talk to such dangerous strangers, especially in an empty parking lot, especially at night. Even if they look so damn teasing. It is perhaps more by token, sticking up for giving them a cold shoulder. Only when she found herself in her quiet apartment, Rey was able to take a breath and relax.

She has got a couple of hours left to have a short nap before the first day at the University starts. But while drawing curtains in her bedroom so that the dim morning light would not show through, she threw look down to the street and stayed put. The car, like a ravenous animal, was flowing softly away, right from the entrance of her house.

“Holy fucking shit!!”

* Queen, David Bowie – Under Pressure

** Queen - Innuendo


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope, you've survived after 9th episode...

For the umpteenth time, an intro from “Stayin 'Alive”* started to play, and Rey grumbled annoyed. Oh, for God's sake, why is the phone so far away? Raking round for it on the plank floor with closed eyes, she tried to find a high-pitched screaming device. Finally, she closed fingers on a cool aluminum case, opened her left eyelid with titanic effort, turned off the alarm and stared at the blinking screen. Desperately trying to tear herself from Morpheus’ embrace, Rey tried to understand what hour, day and place in the universe were at that moment. Hollow-hearted electronics showed it was already fifteen minutes past seven in the morning. Only one hundred twenty minutes of sleep had snagged her for today. Swearing like a trooper she kicked herself out of the warm bed and pottered along to the shower, shivering from the morning coolness. The drafts in this house belonged to her personal curse. In the kitchen, that played the role of a living room at the same time, a light shock as the sight of already dressed Finn was waiting for her. The guy has just been finishing his breakfast.

“I am sleeping and can see a dream,” Rey muttered.

“Hello, night owl,” the friend was as fresh as daisy, and his wrinkled T-shirt caused an itchy desire to smooth it. With an iron, even with a grave stove. “Where is your gratitude?”

“What for?” - Rey squinted suspiciously, rubbing one frozen foot on the other. She usually was an early bird, but it was assumed that birds would sleep sometimes in the least. Birds, but not Rey.

“I’ve got a breakfast ready for you!”

“That, I bet, you’ve just eaten.”

In the morning, Rey was rarely in the mood, and it wasn’t a big surprise with such a schedule. She should make the sign of the cross and be grateful that she could even her open eyes today. And she didn’t have the presidential emergency satchel. When the awakening “showed up” on the days after the night shifts, as todays, it was just right thing to duct-tape her mouth not to hurt somebody. Or not to kill somebody. By good fortune Finn knew her too well and did not pay attention to increased sneakiness and going off scale morning sarcasm.

“You have been on the way to the shower,” he reminded her, sending a piece of fluffy omelet into his mouth. Rey’s mouth watered and her stomach rumbled. Fifteen minutes later, she already was sitting at the table, dispatching delish food and trying to find a schedule on the phone at the same time.

“What d’ you have there today?” Finn asked, ordering a taxi and taking her pills from a case, standing on a table. They were shamelessly late.

“Thank God, only lectures,” Rey said with her mouth full. “I'm not capable think now at all. Well, well... Advanced topics on power electronics, then computer technology, and ... oh, but this must be interesting. Last year I signed up for this course, but I wasn’t sure that it would take place. For some reason, just few students decided to apply for it, but this is the main ones.

“What are you talking about?”

“Artificial Intelligence. Everything, ranging from the nuts and bolts like methods, architecture, construction and neural network training, to philosophical reflection on the difference between us and animals. I have dreamed of attending these lectures from the moment I arrived ...” she finally raised a look at Finn who was suspiciously silent. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“This the course is given by Professor Ren?” Her friend said it with a strange voice.

“I have no idea,” Rey blinked in surprise and surfed the faculty website to

view information. А minute later, she nodded. “Yes, you are right. How do you know?”

“Well...” the guy said, “it has been whispered a lot about him. It’s even strange that you do not know anything.”

“For example?” She stared at her friend with interest, rolling a handful of drug pills in her hands.

“He is rumoured to work with United States Department of Defence.”

“And?” Rey blinked in surprise. “Half MIT works for them.”

“No,” Finn grimaced. “You don’t understand. He does not work _for_ them. He works_ with_ them. Military jack-in-office are just about to get their heads up his ass: they want Ren to sell his one-of-a-kind computer development only to them.”

Rey got up, picking up her bag from the floor and throwing a huge lecture notebook there, but almost immediately is being freezy again. The friend’s words interested her in earnest.

“Why don't they just hire him to work then?”

“Who knows,” Finn shrugged, throwing a rucksack over his shoulder. “They say they tried to call him, then they wanted to buy him, they even threatened him. And he just took over their Web site for the whole day and hacked the internal system, as a result of that hardcore porn was broadcast on all their monitors for fifteen minutes.”

“Really?!” she laughed. “That can’t be true! He is Professor. They could have put him to prison for that.”

“They could,” the guy nodded. “But they need him too much. All these programs of intelligent control, robotic unmanned military vehicles and the bit are his handiwork. They need him, he knows about it and takes the piss out of them, as best he can. But, I won’t deny Ren is a damn smart guy.”

“How old is he? If, as you said, he collaborates with the military, then he must be a very cool specialist.”

“Like thirty-five or so.”

“Wow,” Ray whistled delightedly. “Then I don’t understand why so few people wanted to attend this man’s lectures. Judging from what you said he was a man of extraordinary genius.”

“Ehmm,” Finn hesitated again, “they say he's a complete moral monster. Tyrant, despot and just an asshole.”

“Well, it’s rather strange to expect sincere meekness and humanity from a man, who was showing the whole Pentagon porn live,” she held out sarcastically.  
“It's not the main point. Rumours are in the air,” Rey rolled her eyes at that, and Finn flared up. “Yes, rumors. This person is very odd, and besides be just content with information that I have. You asked about it! So, a whisper goes round, that he doesn’t mind to hook up with woman-students.”

Silently Rey opened her mouth in mute surprise, then closed it. It's starting to come together: picture of a future meeting with this professor loomed pretty “lovely”. But they were interrupted by a signal of Finn’s phone. Uber has just arrived.

They continued the conversation in undertones, sitting on the back seat of an old sedan and trying so that the Indian driver couldn’t hear their words. They went to Cambridge, where, as it’s known, even walls have not only ears, but also thermal imagery and sonar devices, so that any shadow or echo of a new gossip didn’t flash unnoticed. Oh, that's you and your student community.

“And who says that?” - Rey said in a natural way.

“Everybody does” her friend shrugged again.

“Doesn’t it seem strange and ridiculous to you: since everyone knows about it, then it’s quite unusual that he hasn’t been fired so far. It means the criminal charge!”

“A blot is no blot unless it be hit,” muttered Finn. “They spread the word, but, you know, these are all rumors only. No one claimed harassment, no complaints were presented, nobody squealed on him in the student union.”

What happens in a black hole stays in a black hole. If there were any affairs, then, probably, consensual Rey nodded, acknowledging the truth of his words. A taboo is a no-no, of course, and it is a taboo in Massachusetts too, but nobody has experience first-hand for a long time and nobody doesn’t see any crime with such affairs. Who cares? Meanwhile, Finn continued: “Besides, Ren is about to be related with the President Snoke.”

“Oh ...” but it was interesting. The Head of the University was an extraordinary and remarkable person, and also very respected.

“Yeah. I don’t know exactly what the story is there, but once I’ve read, Snoke was his supervisor for his PhD. So there are tight bonds than bolts with nuts on the cable-stayed bridge.”

“Well, everything is clear,” Rey shook her head. Oh, these rumors! It is just surprising, this person doesn’t have snouts and horse hooves and tail, he doesn’t breathe the overpowering stench of Hell and the earth doesn’t turn to ashes under his feet. People are always inventive due to their own envy and poverty. “Have you ever seen him?”

“Nope.”

“I’ve got it, newsmonger,” she leaned back and closed her eyes.

She wanted to sleep ragingly, and even the mysterious monster-professor hadn’t awaken her brain to mental activity. She has to survive this day somehow and not to die. Rey's thoughts, who got car sick in the morning traffic jam on the Longfellow Bridge, segwayed into thoughts about another man. The memories about last night were being blunted by her little shut-eye in the car. Now she wasn’t sure that the car of the guest from the club was driving away from their house. Maybe he just drove by. At the very least, there were not so much roads around. But what a man of that stripeforgot in such poky ghetto of Dorchester? He definitely is not interested in three-farthing whores or grass of dubious quality. And anyway, it’s actually interesting, why the hell he stumbled upon the idea to talk to her. Rey could not imagine curiosity for herself as a woman, even in the worst wet dream. She looked like a badly plucked, scraggy, blue, dressed chicken from the cheapest butcher shop. One must be blind or wretched to see something pretty in her. Well, or one must be a nerd with blue balls, like all her ex’. Cheer up, she would have been done with this exhausting study soon or late, and it would be possible to get away from it all and take a break from everyday life. Maybe after that she would look like a human being, not like a walking dead. With these thoughts, she dropped off, leaning against Finn's shoulder. A sharp jolt and brakes squeal woke her up.

Rey blinked sleepy, trying to figure out where she was and what just had happened. It seemed that everything was okay, only the driver was cursing at one buster who had just cut them off close to the campus and speeded off, screaming around with his car’s motor. Friends paid their taxi fare and were spilled out of the cab on crowded because of the morning hour Vassar Street.

“Are you going to Hux today?” Finn asked, throwing his backpack over his shoulder.

“Yes, I thought to step in after lectures. I need sketch a plan and remember what I covered with writing”.

“Such a limp sack...”

“I know what you are but what am I?!” Finn hugged her, kissing her cheek.

“I missed you, baby.” Take care”.

Rey rolled her eyes and was about to give a rocket to her excessively caring friend, but the phone rang. She smiled at hearing so familiar “Stayin' Alive” and immediately forgot about her displeasure. After one of her heart seizures when Finn, shaking with fright, drenched nitroglycerin into her with trembling hands while waiting for an ambulance, he put this melody for all phone calls. According to his version, not to forget the rhythm. Just in case. And for five years he has been true to this song, although it’s got accustomed. He waved goodbye to her, showing that conversation will last for a long time. Rey nodded and headed toward building number thirty eight a little further down the street.

In the entrance hall of the campus, home-made electric vehicles for the next exhibition were waiting for her, so she had to squeeze through a-Babel-of-voices crowd, giving a nod of greeting to her acquaintances on her way. The staircase to the third floor was overcrowded with hurrying graduate students, lost freshmen and everyone else who lost his/her mind slightly in chaos of the first day at the University. Finally, Rey approached the desired lecture hall and flopped down on the bench, trying to take a breather. She managed that to come in time, but her heart was being beside itself in a torn rhythm and painfully laid in the chest. Frowning a little from discomfort, she took out a notebook and tried not to fall asleep.

An hour and a half passed as in a fog, Rey nodded from drowsiness over another scheme from time to time and tried to yawn no wider than her palm, which covered her mouth. She was terribly ashamed of such condition, because the special chapters about electronics were to be included in final exams. But it bothered her even more, in what condition she would attend the last lecture for this day. At that moment she was ready to fall into a deep sleep even upright. But anyway the next introductory lecture on computer technology cheered her up a little. They had a good time discussing an example of physical modeling of the aerodynamics of live and roasted turkeys, cited by Professor Matsu. The conclusions were ambiguous.

The meeting with Finn took place for lunch at a local pizzeria. Having ordered food for themselves, they were searching for a free table. They were lucky to find a place near huge, full-wall, window where they could thoughtlessly examine passersby, hurrying along the sunlit streets. Mirages appeared every here and there on a hot asphalt, and it was cool and quiet in a small pizzeria.

The phone vibrated invitingly in the pocket. Rey took out an obtrusive apparatus and looked at the screen, where messages in the messenger streamed one after another. Scrolling through them quickly, Rey sighed deeply and reached out for her laptop.

“Freelancing?” asked Finn, fighting with another piece of pizza, that didn’t want to part with its neighbour. Tons of cheese spread grease-spotted over a plate, smashing to a mummy.

“M-hm,” she nodded assent, stuffing a huge chunk of a vegetarian sandwich into her mouth. and not noticing, how the crumbs were pouring from her lips on the table. Finn screwed up his face in revulsion, but said nothing. Pot calls the kettle black! Rey's hands, meanwhile, were calling up a necessary program.

Freelancing was considered to be a natural income for any student at the University. It was as natural as breathing, sleeping, eating, and nerding out, till the cows come home. Finn, for example, was freelancing as a system administrator as many as five offices at once, sometimes recovering a denial of service once again right from the phone at a party or in the midst of laboratory class. In such a way everyone lived, and teachers, for the most part, turned a blind eye to this, realizing, that otherwise it was simply impossible to **survive****.**

“You should eat meat,” her friend compelled once again, tearing a savory piece of ham from the cheese. “You’ve got emaciated and look like a floor mop. I meant no offense, but even for my taste it’s not cool.

“Are you an expert on female beauty? Somehow I’ve missed this moment.

“I feel an affection towards something… bonny.”

“Yeah, I'll take that into account. But don’t worry, I would definitely eat pitiable animals as soon as I can only earnmoney for a decent steak, and not for such a mixture of soy and cardboard, which is called ham”.

“ It is said by the person who eats tofu.”

“Tofu at least is not trying to be the one claims to be a pig! It is honest and straightforward, and therefore I choose it,” she concluded her speech with emotion. And returned to her program, uploading regular porn banners to the client’s site. Friend watched her manipulations silently for a while, working hard with jaws.

“The nuns of your shelter would have seen you.”

“So what? It's not me there, in the photo, so that they can blame me,” she’s not  
distracted from the lines of code running before her eyes. She could hardly keep her eyes open, and everything was wan, Rey blinked and her gaze lingered on the highlighted symbols. Good news was some things were practiced until it became automatic: insert a block, assign variable data, load a link ...

“But you boost the fornication!” He spoke though nose. “Doublestandards”.

“I am not boosting anything. Everyone is free to choose, what to be, what to watch, well, to consult Dr. John Jerkoffor not to do that. And yes, all religions are built on a double “bottom”. Slapped in the face, turn the other cheek, and then ride a horse and crusade against the offender. And immediately be such a smart alec, a holy martyr for faith, king of heaven and homeland.”

“Every time I wonder how you were able to grow such a smart ass with a poison tongue in this church” the friend laughed.

“Cause of utter hopelessness, precisely. Not only such thoughts had been popping into my head with frankincense during vesper’s service.”

They kept the conversation going for a long time, and said goodbye to to each other in splendid fettle, when about twenty minutes were left, before the class started. But despite the fun, by half past three in the afternoon, when Reyslowly walked toward the campus after their quick nosh in “Square Four,” tiredness and drowsiness attacked her with renewed vigour. She wrote them off for an unexpected hallucination. It seemed to her that a black dead spot flashed between houses on Osborne Street that reminded her the familiar car. But she pushed this thought away, because such the lie of matters would be unbelievable. Rey even laughed up at such absurdity: there was nothing more incongruous than yesterday's cupcake-jackass in the midst of geeks and deadheads. Oh how ridiculous he would have stood out here! Although, Harvard was located a little further, and there the number of such Mr. Fancy Pants grew exponentially, as soon as you walked there. Perhaps she would have fantasized about it, if her classmate Melanie hadn’t distracted her, who ran down Rey at the entrance to the campus. This time, her blond hair was hanging down her back, and even traces of makeup were present on the face. Rey was surprised at that. No, the girl was really beautiful, just it was so unusual appeal for her that immediately caught Rey’s eye. Melanie usually used to wear one of her numerous hoodies and distressed jeans, a broken stylus from the tablet hooked dull hair in a sloppy bun.

“I saw you’d enrolled in a course of Professor Ren?” without a greeting she started the conversation, grabbing Rey's arm.

“That’s true,” she agreed carefully, trying to release herself from prehensile fingers of Melanie.

“Me too,” the friend giggled mysteriously. “Not every we get a chance to socialize with such a man.”

“Yes, Finn said that the professor was an expert in..”.

“God, Rey,” Mel interrupted her, pulling away and looking at her somehow oddly. “I am  
far from all about that.”

Rey wanted to ask - what the hell was she talking about then, but Melanie briskly jumped towards Annette, her bosom friend, who at this time decided to put on ... A dress? Really? What was going on? The cheerful chattering and yeasty laughs of the girlfriends came to Rey. Sighing, she went in alone towards a small lecture hall, that, thank goodness, was located on the first floor. She sat down at her desk and she shielded her eyes and lowered her head on her crossed arms. Sometimes Rey regreted she couldn’t be as carefree and cheerful in her life as the most of her classmates were. Bad health conditions and a character full of blunt stubbornness kept at a sufficient distance almost all of her peers. She wasn’t into empty talks, silly gossips and someone's stupidity, that’s why her circle of near and dear was limited by Finn, Phasma, and, perhaps, by Professor Hux. Amazing, but only among them she always had something to talk about and to be silent for a while. They knew when to avoid worming themselves into her confidence, and when it was worth be there for her. Professor was just a train Mr. Nice Guy, and Rey felt like a kind of guardian when once again she persistently asked him not to take more students than hours in a day into practice. The fact was that, their relationship with Hux for the incomplete three years that she spent in his laboratories passed somehow imperceptibly into the category of a queer-way-friendship, as far as this was possible with their unequal and subordinate status. They even went to one concert somehow. The four of them, and then they drank cheap beer together.

Rey smiled at cast mind back, but suddenly it seemed to her everything around became somehow suspicious quiet. The receptors caught some unfamiliar aroma, with sharp scent of sweet and sour aromatic notes, being absorbed straight into the brain. She had her work cut out to lift up her head from the countertop, with feeling of displeasure that there was a trace of a pencil on her cheek on that, it appeared, she was lying. And then dark blue men's trousers burst upon her eyes. She blinked, trying to chase away the delusion, but the pants didn’t disappear, nor did perfume composition hovering around her. No, the legs were there too, of course, in these trousers, but the first thing her sleepy mind noted was the perfect crease. Rey even managed to wonder if they were tailored. Then she threw a cursory glance up, drawing attention to jacket, accessorized with pants, a thin tie tied some arty-farty knot and ... Rey felt her face grew pale, and her heart was beating furiously. No. It just couldn't be true! It was a nightmare then! What is he doing here, frack?

“Glad you are pleased to wake up, miss ...” the asshole from the club looked down at her. The black eyebrow wasraised with a dubious expression, and an arrogantly contemptuous expression settled in his dark brown eyes. Rey was trying to fuss over what this holy terror wanted from her at that moment. Finally with her blanked out by a slumber mind, she realized that she was not sleeping, and somehow she managed to speak chokingly in a piping voice:

“Teedo. Rey Teedo.

“My pleasure, Miss Teedo,” he said slowly, with laziness, a shiver went up and down her spine after the sound of his voice. Things were looking bad. Shit hit the fan name it mud. At the same time, Rey had an unpleasant feeling that the question about her name was mere formality. This filthy jerk knew her name very well. And yet, he kept talking something. “I bring to your attention that I won’t tolerate such behavior in the future. You came here to study, and if you have any problems with the schedule, contact your tutor.

“No problems, sir,” she muttered, still trying to believe in what’d just happened. Universe, for what? “My apologies for that. This won’t happen again.”

The neck has already gone numb, because she had to sit looking up. How, the hell, was he tall? Six feet? Seven?!

“Let's hope so,” he nodded, and with a familiar gesture, he threw back his black, like a real Vantablack**, hair from his face. Rey was ready to dance with the devil, just to be sure, such an Adam Henry did it on purpose! And then he suddenly smiled ugly.

“And, if someone suddenly offers you help in the future, I do not recommend you to refuse. The course is quite complicated.”

The weasel words of this phrase, that only they two understood, made Rey choke with anger. And she didn’t care there was an insane gleam in her eyes, that shone in large letters like on an advertising shield: “Here you are, bastard! I won’t forget it in a hurry!”. She was not used to sit just down under insults, veiled as dirty hints and professed care. So she repeated the phrase that she had already told him for several hours back.

“Thank you very much for your care, professor, however, I am able to handle it by myself.”, her voice soundedconfident now, and she met calmly his gaze. And that's why it did not escape her, as an ugly smiley turned into a grin. Meanwhile the professor nodded, and finally passed through the lecture hall, sat down on the edge of his table with casual and at the same time familiar movement, scanning his quiet little audience with a watchful stare. Rey took a breath in an unnoticeable manner, affording an opportunity to relax a bit. She said to herself with sad fatigue, it looked like this year would last forever.

“So, I think, you all guessed to read on the faculty website that my name is Kylo Ren,” meantime the professor began the lecture, casually straightening the edge of a cuff, and Rey rolled her eyes when she saw the flashing cufflink. Oh, for God's sake! “Maybe many of you even handled with Google and Wikipedia, preparing for a subject, new for you. Commendable, but useless. Everything you could find entree, it was either written or edited by me, and I do not intend to make the life of my students easier. My task is not only to supplement your knowledge basic concepts of creating artificial intelligence and neural networks this semester, but it’s obviously to teach you the purity and culture of programming.

Rey blinked in surprise at the end of the phrase. The majority of her classmates had learned to write codes before they were able to speak. Wasn’t rather late professor decided to re-educate them? Ren continued his speech, and Rey listened in spite of herself to his deep precise voice in the silence of the audience. However, she tried not to pay attention to this haunting aroma, it seemed she was plagued with it, although the professor had been standing for a long time at the other end of the lecture hall. It was blowing her mind - her mind had lost its spring enough already. Otherwise, how else could she explain to her why she was going ape over this scent?

“I saw the work of every of you, and, believe me, this is more likely to be a no-originality-shit,” an indignant whisper passed through the ranks. - But you still have a chance to become someone more than mope mediocrity that graduates this Alma Mater.

Perhaps, this could hurt hereto in dead earnest. Rey even wondered if she would take offence at it, but she didn’t have time to decide, as Ren continued:

“Do not take it very much to heart,” he raised his hands conciliatory. “But if you really want to be an enormous boon for the world, to make all your ambitious dreams and plans come true, you must go against your heart and step over your "I can’t."

She gasped angrily. What a freak! Well, the whole study here is a pack of violence against yourself. Or the professor is expecting them all to throw at his feet begging to teach them? What is he? A new Messiah, or what? But it seemed her indignation was not shared by anybody else. Guys proudly raised their heads, showing that they certainly weren’t a “Standard mediocrity”, and Melanie and her friends just stared shamelessly at Ren, paying no attention to his words. And Rey was concerned that these Nice Nellies were so close to drooling. Indeed, it was a sin not to fuck such girls when they fall into your hands.

“Before we delve into the human brain description from a mathematical point of view and determine the programming paradigm, I would like to discuss with you the concept of intelligence. What is it?” He was being silent for a couple of seconds, but no one answered him. However, it didn’t bother him at all. He continued his speech with arms folded across one's chest. “John McCarthy*** used to say that artificial intelligence - was an attempt to use computers for understanding of human intelligence. But is it possible? What do you think?”

Silence reigned in the audience as students mulled over their answer. Diffidently, Rey raised her hand.

“Miss Teedo,” Professor Ren made an inviting gesture, calling on her to speak. Something like a passing resemblance of pleasure flickered in his gaze.

“In my point of view the main problem is that we cannot give the exact definition of the very concept of "intelligence" ...”

“Now, some biologists are offended by you, Miss Teedo,” Ren interrupted her, cheerfully looking at the blush that flooded the girl's cheeks. But she only stubbornly bit her lip and glanced at him sullenly.

“Biologists might be offended,” she said slowly, looking straight into the arrogant brown eyes of this bastard, “But only if the reason of their existence is to cast about for opportunities to ego-searching and to nursing their pride. And then they are not worth a do it as scientists, whether they waste their talents on trifles.”

A hint about his behavior in the club has clearly reached the goal. Kylo Ren’s eyes sparkled like a highly dangerous fire, and he answered with insinuating words:

“Indeed, but the skewed nature and the provinciality of thoughts are much worse.”

Wow, but they’d already engaged in ad hominem attacks. One thing was for certain, but Rey’s mind has never been as a matter of silo-thinking. What a blow under the belt!

“I agree,” she answered, “but still the indolence of the mind is just as fatal as its frivolity.

“You are a scientific prude, Miss Teedo,” - she definitely managed to hurt him, she didn’t understand hereto by what exactly. By her own words? By reciprocal hints? Or by the fact she expressed her dissatisfaction with his behavior? Oh, for God's sake, let him do what he listsed. It was his life, and she absolutely didn’t care a dime about him. And therefore, she answer flatly:

“Not at all. But I have no great regard for scientific whores.”

Rey felt like everyone in the lecture hall was honestly trying to figure out what the hell right now was going on. Forgetting to blink, they, looking like the stunned goldfish, shifted their gaze from the professor to their I-have-a-glib-tongue classmate. Meanwhile Ren was looking down at her thoughtfully from the height of his high stature, and she felt uneasy at his unwinking stare and heavy look. He seemed to be studying her in great detail with the interest of a realcollector, as if she were collector's piece, like an exotic butterfly pinned to paper. Then Rey scooped out the last handful of courage, almost ran out of, and just as firmly continued:

“You can sell your brains in different ways. You don’t have to deal in it at all, but go on wild spending sprees, missing the chance to change at least something for the better in this world. It all depends on the level of awareness and development of the psyche of an individual, the status of a person in society, his or her deliberateness. And so we come to conclusion that intelligence is a combination of not only biological and chemical elements, but also socio-psychological features. Recalling such data in a machine code seems impossible to my mind.”

The professor stood thinking her words over, and then tossed his head and suddenly  
gave a broad smile.

“And it seems, you are an ambitious idealist, Miss Teedo. But there is a grain of truth in your words, look ...”

He turned to the audience and said something, explained, asked to write down exactly as told, and Rey sat buried her nose in her notes and tried to understand what the hell she was doing. Why were there all these verbal escapades and dirty insinuations? Crap, she promised herself never to speak with him again. But how was it even possible if he was her professor? My Lord, practical course is awaiting them next semester! She won’t survive it, no doubt. Either she’ll choke to death at “overpowering stench”, or chafe at and punch on the bastard’s nose. And yet ... she would like to have a total contempt for him now, like a few hours earlier, but she couldn’t. Their strange, ambiguous dialogue made her feel unusual for the first time: as if someone brushed away like a dust the abeyance of several centuries at once from her convolutions and opened wide the windows. Nothing like this had happened to her for a long time. But that was a lie. That had _never _happened before. She raised her head, darting a glance at him, and immediately rushing back to her notes. It sucks.

For the next hour and a half, Rey was sitting and enthusiastically listening, being all ears, to a lecture by a man whom, since yesterday evening, she was ready to call him all the names under the sun. Now with every word, new sophisticated a question to his audience, Kylo Ren broke into shatters quickly formed opinion of himself in one blow. And he managed somehow, quite imperceptibly, to sketch his image much more interesting than a translucent portrait of a one-off badass. It was unexpected, but surprisingly charming. The professor was definitely very smart and, to be honest, dark-minded machiavellian. Finn's words about his talents came to mind. All his "talents". And if rumors are true, then, help them God, their course is waiting for a very busy year, full of an incredible ambiguous nightmare.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * "Stayin' Alive" is used by doctors to practice cardiopulmonary resuscitation - its rhythm ideally coincides with the frequency of compression. Rey is good at ironic over herself.
> 
> ** substance of carbon nanotubes. It is the blackest known substance.
> 
> *** American computer scientist, author of the term “artificial intelligence”, inventor of Lisp language, founder of functional programming, Turing prize winner for his tremendous contribution to the field of artificial intelligence research.


	3. Chapter 3

Of course, she wasn’t about to go to Professor Hux today. Far from it! Just as soon as Ren announced the end of the class, Rey flounced out of the room like a particle from the accelerator’s funnel- violently running and blazing through everything in her path. She wanted to go as far as possible from this man. She passed through the corridor with a quick stride, heading for devoted glass doors of the main entrance. She desperately wanted to throw off the obsession and a welter of confused thoughts. Rey Teedo had a heart for certainty and clear timeline, trying to optimize everything that was only possible. She stayed away from needles troubles and anticipointments, not expecting anything much from them for very good reason. Flying through the hall and elbowing away all the people in her way, Rey stopped, when she found herself on the street. She leaned against a tree inhaling a dusty and stuffy appeared dimly again and again.

A few minutes passed away before she refreshed herself enough in the out-of-doors and her head started working again. And finally, she felt relieved under the blue hot August sky, she with relieved that she came to herself and her ability to think was back. More or less. Professor Kylo Ren steamrolled over her. Everything, all and everything in him, ranging from his towering growth to his overgrown gigantic ego, drove her crazy. He infuriated her only with the fact of his existence, his whole life-style contradicted her views that she considered acceptable and worthy. In a matter of one and half an hour he managed to make her to go nuts cause of ridiculous foppishness that she wanted to moan and groan and besides she had a wish to drag him through the mud, so that at least he would cease a wee bit to be so expensive and pompous ass. Damned disgusting self-confident smark cockie! But the most terrifying thing was being still different. Despite all this anger, consciously cultivated in her head, he seemed to claim her attention. For God’s sake, not like a man, no! But at the same time it’s ludicrous to deny that the professor Ren wasn’t able to crush more than one fragile female heart. To her great embarassment anddispleasure, she remembered quiet well what stature was sheltered itself under his tailored suit. Thanks to yesterday's escapade in the parking lot. However, it wasn’t his appearance that could really draw the eye of Rey Teedo, oh no, it was much worse. There was something unique, unimaginably bright and sparkling among thousands of other people in Kylo Ren. The thing that touched more than all the brilliant attributes and trappings of a golden boy. Brains. Fuck-you tomatoes! What brains he’s got... Each gyrus would be like a feast for the eyes. A masterpiece, worthy of being carved in top-notch marble and exhibited at the Museum of Natural History. She had a gut feeling of the MTI student that this man has a truly unique mind. Ha, her scientific instincts immediately made a dead-set like a hunting dog, no sooner had he opened his mouth and started to speak. Beautiful mouth by the way. Shit!

Rey pressed her trembling hands to her cheeks, trying to slow down the whirlwind of emotions and thoughts tumbling about in her head. In fact, the situation seemed to be more than embarrassing. And with all her heart she didn’t understand why the professor hadn’t pretended that they weren’t acquainted. That would be the right thing. That would be decent. But in fact, what had actually happened yesterday and today? Maybe, she should restrain her imagination, agitated by the words of Unkar. A man offered to give a lift to the girl on her way home at four o’clock in the morning – it was a fine gesture. Professor advised not to neglect any help - whatever one may say, it was a sensible remark, anyway. Everything was pretty obvious and matter-of-fact, and at the same time, for some reason, she did not doubt the double bottom of each of his phrases. And their dialogue today had clearly walked between the lines, stringing subtext for a hint.

She couldn’t be mistaken. Intonation, facial expressions, and damn him, even the wording itself simply yelled: he remembered her, he recognized her. But what’s wrong with that? Melanie and her girlfriends didn’t give her a chance to think of such undoubtedly important thoughts. They surrounded Rey like a swarm of rabid bees and immediately set off annoyingly buzzing in her ears.

“Rey, dear Rey,” Melanie began with great panache, taking Rey’s arm again. What the passion for touching? “How insidious of you to keep silent that you,it seems, have already been acquainted with Professor Ren.”

“What?” - Rey stared in mute amazement at Mel, horrified at thinking, how they’d learned about their meeting at Takodana. She rolled her eyes and was about to speak, as she was interrupted by Katherine, who was blowing a ginger fringe from her eyes. Is that an eyeliner? winged eyeliner? Mother of God, what happened to them all?! They’d known each other for almost six years, but never before Rey’d seen them so... so dolled themselves up.

“Just don’t even try to deny it!” polished nails also dug into the second arm, and Rey felt trapped. it was hot under the scorching rays the setting sun, but she suddenly felt a blistering cold.

“I don’t understand what you are talking about...” her attempt to sweep this conversation under the rug looked frankly pathetic.

“Lord Rey! Stop fooling around,” Annette got angry, the third person of their company, standing in front of the victim and resting her hands on her hips. This person was always looking great: perfectly straight wheat-colouredhair caused a desire to touch them, and at the same time soft brown eyes made even desperate geeks run after the beauty. Unfortunately for self-confident admirers, such bonny face wasn’t a birdbrain. At some moments, especially lonely and sad, Rey envied her charming and fun classmate quietly. She had only to dream about such attention, with her tart temper and ordinary appearance. “We are not stupid. Everything immediately became clear to everyone, as soon as he did not expel you out from the class on a dime. He was standing there and was affected of your drooling in a dream. The whole faculty is aware that Ren forgives such putting a slight on discipline only his _darlings__.”_

Annette expressively moved her perfect eyebrows, highlighting her voice on the last word. No doubts remained in the enclosed vulgar sense. The others nodded in agreement. And Rey thought that she had misheard or suddenly moved to another galaxy. What?! Don’t they seriously think that ... oh, God! What a shame! Reality turned out to be more disturbing than all fears together  
taken. It seemed that the expression of shock on Rey’s face sobered up the company of girls a little.

“Look, girls.” Mel threw up her hands in surprise, finally letting the victim’s elbow free, “Rey seems not to understand in real what we are talking about.

“Absolutely,” Rey muttered through her teeth, feeling her cheeks blushing. It turns out that these chicks with birdbrains really decided that she, Holy God, was sleeping or going to share a bed with the professor? Have them lost their fucking mind! Anger covered her with a wave, her whole body was trembling with rage and Rey scowled at them furiously and spoke quietly: “Thanks to your tweaks and tricks, I’ve already twigged. And I want to say I'm here to study, not to fuck with a teacher for credits, passed tests or for highly controversial moves and entertainment! This is Massachusetts! Or you’ve already forgotten about it with your hormone-clouded brains? There is a crowd behind you that is hell-bent on occupying of your warm little place on a study bench. Do you really want to fly out with a personal record in such matter? Are there just few criminal records? So go ahead - spread your legs wider. You can do it right here, anyway, he will step out of building, so at least he’ll appreciate your efforts in daylight for sure.”

She looked around the girls, who were being quiet cause of her attack, and continued wearily, wishing to close this question once and for all:

“Keep your insinuations with you. I saw him at the uncle's club yesterday, I had no idea who he was. Out of courtesy and only out of it, he offered to take me home after the shift, I refused. That is all.”

However, that wasn’t all in fact. But she’d rather bite off her tongue, than share with someone what had happened. Whole situation was too embarrassing, and after today's lecture - also humiliating, it diminished her.

“Сome down to earth from the clouds or stop reading light novels. Holidays are over, it's time to end real or imaginary sex drive. You are behaving immoral.

“Oh, you’re so self-righteous goody,” Melanie replied with cheerful amusement, it seemed that eloquent speech didn’t affect her whatsoever. Rey wanted to hit her head on a tree, next to which she was still standing. She always had suspicions that Mel’s brains were located in the vagina.

“I. AM. Not. A Hypocrite. I just keep my libido to myself, and don’t keep throwing it in every Tom, Dick and Harry’s face!”

No, she was fed up with it! Rey spun around, tearing her hand out of Katherine's prehensile fingers, and swiftly headed away from this stupid bunch of horny girls. Today Rey’s IQ began to plummet among them.

Someone called out from behind, but she only waved it off. Rey hurried to get out away from campus, being afraid to break loose if she speaks to anyone else. Exhaustion crushed to the ground weighing like a tectonic plate, threatening to hammer it knee-deep into molten asphalt. But adrenaline from all this crap helped her keep upright position. Pain spread nasty under the right shoulder blade, surrendering in an ache in sternum and creeping unpleasant pain over a tired body. No, Finn was definitely right with his annoying bubbling. She urgently needed to pull herself together and finally get enough sleep, otherwise the risk of getting to the hospital with another crisis would no longer be hypothetical. The last academic year and disease are completely incompatible concepts in the harsh realities of MIT. Massachusetts Institute of Technology was not in vain called the paradise for crazy geniuses and the hell for the rest. It was possible to reduce multi-pound weight of problems only on working ass off on projects, term papers and endless research work from morning till night.

On her way home, Rey wrote a message to Finn he wouldn’t wait for her today at Hux. Looking at the phone, she turned onto Portland Street, where taxi drivers usually hustled, and stopped at a pedestrian crossing, passing by a crowd of some strangely dressed cyclists. It seemed that Harvard staged a parade nearby. Again. Sighing, she already intended to cross the street, as a matte black car suddenly braked right next to her, not hitting her miraculously. The heartbreaking screech of tires left wide traces of worn rubber behind it on the pavement. Rey flinched all over and instinctively staggered back, scared more for the last two-wheeled moron in a bike-a-thon than for herself. Not charitable expression passes her lips. In the same second, a motley street crowd in a single rush turned towards the reckless driver and stared at him with avid interest. In surprise looking at the idiot that drove along the quiet streets of Cambridge at such an hour, Rey felt how her miserable heart was trembling fearfully. She can't believe it! ... Damn asshole! Again! For what sins this day could become even more lousy?

She barely kept herself in order not to roll her eyes – there was the same car in front of her, apparently fresh from hell. It only remained to make the sign of the cross and pray that the narcissistic professor wouldn’t pull another ambiguous boner on Main Street. But then she could never have got rid of idiotic jokes. Meanwhile, the seconds were dripping one by one, and she stood and stared at the black a four-wheeled beast, completely unaware of what to do now. Finally a black Mercedes glass slowly sank, and her gaze rested on Kylo Ren’s face with that yucky smile. Such a wanker! Anger, already smoldering after talk with Melanie and the rest of the skanks, flashed with a new flame. Rey was burning in her own anger and shame, because now not only students in a closed classroom, but at least a hundred of fucking onlookers have become witnesses to the disgusting scene! Giving herself a mental kick, she stared irritably in front of herself. Of all the stupid things!! She had to leave immediately, not pay attention, but just look away and disappear into the scurrying crowd, but ... the time was lost.

“Need a lift, Miss Teedo?” a voice came to her, raising hairs on her body by a wave of goose bumps.

It was likely the bastard was a master of spieling. His ideal intonation games even in these miserable five words should be brought into an anthology to train pick-upers on them. But cause of the manner how the professor singled out her last name, she wanted to give him a black eye or spit on hood of his bodacious car. If possible, with sulfuric acid. It seemed to her at that moment that all sounds on the street died down in anticipation of an imminent denouement, moreover, in bloody one. Irritation popped around her with the noise of a power plant, but she just needed to steer clear. She wouldn’t give him any chance for verbal provocation. And therefore Rey silently stared into those arrogant eyes for a couple of moments, and then, still, without saying a word, slowly raised her right hand with a sticked-out middle finger. Her pantomime was understood correctly, because in the next second this interstellar-bastard laughed and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The rabid big-nosed monster roared with an engine and jumped away, taking its owner into the hot haze of August sunset.

“Ugh, just detest him with every fiber of my being...” Rey muttered out loud, staring after the rapidly receding blackpoint. How did the universe even manage to breed such disaster?

All the way home, she stared out the window of the subway train, then the bus, shedding from the heat and mentally inventing intricate polysyllabic curses. That helped to hold out for monstrous half an hour before such a native and shabby front door was shut behind her. Rey just fell onto her own bed made up in the morning in the bedroom and fell into a deep dream without dreams. Only in the morning a black car in the form of some winged creature from hell was able to sneak into her subconscious. In a dream, she chased after an unknown beast, trying furiously and unsuccessfully knock it down with a stick.

***

Rey ran into Hux’ lab the next day before the afternoon lecture on quantum optics started. Both needed to indicate the scope of work for a year, and already decide on a report on the upcoming conference in biotechnology. They applied for it in the spring, and recently an answer’s come: their article was accepted.

The collaboration with Hux was amazingly easy and enjoyable. Tall, funny skinny Mr. Nice guy professor was only ten years older than Finn or she was, and it was pure pleasure. Hux hadn’t got married, he did not tire of thanking Heaven for that, disappearing for weeks at various conferences and symposiua. Far and by, his story was pretty funny. Hereditary military engineer who worked for several years at British intelligence service, one morning found himself an ardent pacifist. Irish blood desired a revolutionary change. Uniform haircut with supportive connivance of the owner quickly grew into a redhead disheveled something. A strict and mean-spoken officer became a delightful lecturer. The Armitage Hux, recorded in Massachusetts Technological Institute by an unimaginable scientific wind, immediately became the object of all students’ love. And there were reasons on that!Covering his violent temper by strict discipline of MI-6, he found an outlet in his teaching with Jewish meticulousness.

The professor tried to give all his knowledge to students with the same passion, with that at one time he gave all of it for the benefit of a fake world peace. Rey sincerely believed that such specialist became extinct. his speech made everyone sit up and take notice, a great sense of humor and a fanatical dedication to his subject acted at all students like hypnosis. After two lectures there had been a line of student who dreamt to write graduation work under Hux’ supervision. And Rey was surprised when Hux’d chosen her among dozens of much more talented classmates in her opinion. Well, Finn was singled out of the many candidates too. But these two men had a very special atmosphere with the smell of common resin, solder and hot plastic. Textolite fanatics, sworn allegiance to the resistors on a nomenclature reference book.

Once it even got to the point that Rey discovered these two in Unkar’s club, drunk to a state of complete loss of signal between the brain and the motor center. More precisely, Finn was in that condition. Hux, having the famous generic liver, was a little more sane. He even managed to clue Rey in that her black friend was mourning a breakupwith his boyfriend, after that he chopped off right behind by the table. The dearest tutor had already woken up in their apartment on an uncomfortable tiny couch, tormented by a wild headache, shame and curiosity. That nightHux became the second person who was let into O’Neally's secret. It wasn’t as if her childhood friend hid his orientation, no. He just did not consider it was necessary to yell about it on every corner. After this incident, the professor often joined their company, consisting of Rey, Finn and her Takodana colleague Rose. Meanwhile, he brought to their company the gorgeous graduate student Phasma Tart, the only person who could put things in order in completely messy papers of their busy professor. All together they played poker, went to concerts and even somehow arranged a tour to Monopoly.

Remembering all this and much more, Rey opened a heavy wooden door, leading to the laboratory of the professor. There was Hux’ office at the end of a gut-like room, full of computers and a variety of chairs. And here, as usual,everything was kept like before: there were some chips, bundles of wires, and the tables were coated with multiple acid solvent stains. Rey with some secret trembling breathed smell of resin and hot metal, that was hovering in the audience year-round, and now closely associated with her supervisor. He, by the way, was found behind one of the special stands with a hood, bent over another printed circuit board.

“Good afternoon, Professor,” Rey beamed.

“Ah, Rey!” - Hux reached out tiredly. It seemed his pale face hadn’t seen the sun over the summer. He smiled and hunched over the table again, armed a soldering iron with some ingenious sting. “I'm glad to see you. Well, how did the semester begin? You’ve chosen the course of Kylo – it’s very commendable, reasonable and useful.”

Rey looked perplexedly at her supervisor. It was something new! Professor had never allowed himself such familiarities, according to the old military habit, observing strict subordination. Except ... Rey and Finn were apparently not in account, like Phasma. Hux interpreted her look in his own way.

“Professor Ren,” he explained.

The clarification was superfluous; Rey would never have forgotten such an unusual combination. Kylo Ren. Deceivingly soft, deceitfully tender at first, and gaudy-rolling at the end. R-r-ren. Yeah, like no other, this man matched his name. Even here there was a damn double bottom.

“Rey?”

She flinched, realizing that she was too thoughtful, and the professor was waiting for an answer.

“Everything’s… fine” she finally managed, pretending not to hear the remark about Ren. But she pulled herself together and continued in a calm tone. “I came find out what we have planned with the conference”.

“How do you feel?” - Hux responded, ignoring her words and looked up from boards, seriously looking at her with his greenish eyes. “Finn said your pain ...”

“His tongue is too long,” she murmured, interrupting her teacher. Their working relationship has long crossed the border of a kind friendship, so she was not surprised at his question - he repeatedly witnessed her small bouts. Rey grumbled more out of habit. Hux smiled knowingly, but his gaze remained serious.

“He's worried,” the professor hesitated for a second, pondering, whether to say something or not, and unexpectedly added. “And me too”.

Rey felt a pleasant warmth, pouring inside. This was all Armitage Hux, a caring and compassionate man. He carried the good in every minute of his existence, that was sometimes used by especially cheeky students. But there were especially unlucky days when the character prevailed over strict professor’s nature. Then their supervisor turned into a decent acid-tongued devil, who hated prim New England, and every joke of him was a part of grim humor.

“I thank you both for your concern, honestly. But I am able to figure it out by myself,” she tried to hide a condescending smile.

“Dr. Chen doesn't think so, neither do I. Rey, you know, you can always ask the institute for a subsidy to conduct at least a small operation. I am sure the commission would approve the request ...” The professor and Finn have been raising this question approximately every six months. They didn’t really hope for her consent, but haven’t been still leaving  
attempts.

“No,” she snapped hard again. “There are enough grants from my projects, to offset the institute’s training costs, but they’re unlikely to want to drag a sick girl as a ballast. There are being always more perspective students for my place.”

“Don't tell nonsense,” Hux suddenly got angry. “You are a valuable asset for Massachusetts, and the commission has adequate people who would show understanding for your situation. But even if not, you can always count on my help, and ...”

“Sir,” Rey said wearily, “I appreciate that you worry about me, but I won’t take anything from anyone. Firstly, it’s only my business. Secondly, you can’t even imagine how huge the amount is.”

Rey smiled and changed the subject.

“So what's up with the conference?”

Hux realized that it was pointless to continue this conversation further, scratched bewildered his red eyebrow and gave up.

“You will have a poster-report, so get the poster ready.”

“Why not a viva-voce report?” - Rey was surprised, sitting down on the edge of the desk, that was standing next to the teacher’s table.

“You still have a lot to complete in your program, and extra questions are inappropriate for your work now. You know, your project is sponsored by a department from NASA, and they are quiet reserved comrades,” he sighed, indicating that of course he would prefer to show them their, his and Rey’s, brainchild, but ... but ... There are always being such conventions and secrecy.

“No problem,” she raised her hands, not insisting on anything more than a piece paper on a metal stand. Hux knows everything better, after all. She was going to say something else, but the professor managed to be the first.

“Oh yes. Have I already say that I am glad about your choice?”

The girl blinked in surprise. What is he talking about?

“Sir?”

“Professor Ren’s course.” Rey overcame the urge to clap annoyingly her hand to the table. They all conspired or what? She had never heard this name for all five years and hadn’t seen this man. But now every day was repeatedly facing with this man, if not alive, then in conversations. Meanwhile, Hux continued. “We must need his help in the final stage, if you still decide to do genome-wide analysis and accumulate library. It is not possible without the similarity of intellectual system.

She felt something tight inside her. No, she’d rather eat her own graduation work, than would ask Ren for assistance. To anyone, even she was ready to personally come to the Mayo Research Centre, but not him! Apparently, the whole range of her emotions reflected on her face, because the professor spoke again:

“So Rey,” he leaned back in his chair, staring at her intently. “I am, of course, not a polygraph, but you are not a poker player. What's the matter?”

“Absolutely nothing,” she impudently lied, hiding her gaze. “I think I can handle it by myself.”

“You have never written in the language of artificial intelligence before,” Hux reasonably remarked, until he went in to the offensive and was still staring at Rey.

“I’ll have a whole semester to learn primitive algorithms,” – she stubbornly didn’t give up.

“But will you manage to finish the program by thesis defence?” - red eyebrows inquiringly soared up.

“I will” Rey also nodded for more conviction.

What else to answer? She perfectly understood that her behavior now is looking more than strange, but she could not do anything. The wish not to contact somehow the professor Ren was stronger than common sense. Her supervisor sighed and rubbed his eyes tiredly.

“I don’t know what had caused your obstinacy. Honestly, I am very surprised at this. Kylo is a great specialist and could help you improve your program. He has worked with biotechnologists more than once ...”

“You call him by name,” she said in surprise, interrupting Hux. He blinked, confused by the unexpected turn of the conversation, but still answered.

“I have known him for six years.” We are friends, in a way,” the man winced involuntarily in the last words.

“Somehow you are not particularly enthusiastic,” Rey said with a laugh, that he smiled.

“Kylo is a complicated person ...”

“Yeah?” - She couldn’t resist the malicious remark. Hux glanced at her feignedly and angrily and crossed his arms over his chest.

“So, tell me. You, of course, have heard all the rumors and legends that wander in the minds of students every year.”

“Glory flies ahead of him,” Rey nodded. – “Of course, I was not going to believe to every rumor that comes from not too smart mouths ...”

“That's true,” Hux didn’t let her finish.

“What?” - She was even taken aback by such an unexpected statement.

“It's all true. Everything you’ve heard is true.”

She expected anything. That her teacher would deny all these ridiculous speculation to shield his friend or not at all would raise this topic. But instead, he recognized so simply and clearly that Kylo Ren was a rare moral freak, unprincipled hacker, rich spender and lover of young female students Wow. This situation around the new professor was increasingly reminiscent of cheap farce. Mother Agness would definitely impose penance on this man: where it’s been seen that a person violates so many commandments by his mere existence! And that’s why Rey blurted out the first thing that occurred to her after all the flashing thoughts.

“Why didn’t anyone report to the police?”

“On whom?” - Hux did not understand.

“On Ren.”

“Good God,” he laughed and rubbed his hand on his chin, where redhead stubble appeared. “Everyone is happy with him: the government, President Snoke, girls. Whatever he has been doing, he does it perfectly.”

“That's a very... inimitable compliment.”

“You and I may not like a lot, but everyone has the right to live their own lives. As long as he brings money, everyone will be turn a blind eye to his tricks. Moreover, I repeat, I have not heard about the dissatisfied.”

“But it's disgusting!”

“Self-righteousness and bigotry don’t suit you, Rey.”

“I'm not a hypocrite!” - for the second time, people somehow believe that the thing was exclusively in the intimate component of the personality of damn Ren. “I saw him in Uncle’s club before the semester started, I know what he is. Where a one-night-stand is in the matter, there is alcohol. I’m not surprised if there is the matter of drugs. And what would become of him in a few years with such an idle life? I won’t argue with you, he has the right to live so as he wants. I just feel sorry for such a meaningless waste of potential.”

“He doesn't waste anything.” Rey had no idea why they were continuing this pointless conversation and why Hux was seeking to justify Ren in her eyes. Maybe, because they really were friends. Meanwhile, the tutor turned back to his board, picking up a soldering iron and finishing up. And Rey seemed like he wasn’t happy what he had to talk about. Apparently, Irish ardor crawled forward again. “No matter how he behaves, no matter what he does, Kylo never allows substances stupefy his brain. As he says, this is the most precious thing he has got. Yes, perhaps, I do not quite approve his too frivolous behavior, about that he is acutely aware. But as a friend he is also great, even though he has a shitty character.”

That's it, is it?. Rey mentally chuckled. Male solidarity and resentment for unjustly accused buddy? A couple more of these dubious praises, and she is imbued herself with enthusiasm for the damn professor contrary to all Unkar’s warnings and her feelings. Just hark to him, so Ren was superman, not mere mortal. Although she wouldn’t be surprised to know that kindness of her professor played again a cruel joke with him. But it’s impossible to be mistaken about one person for so many years, isn’t it?  
  


“Your words about poker were offensive, by the way,” she remarked jokingly, drawing the conversation from dangerous channel. “We are going to resume our meetings on Thursdays at Takodana. Come join us. And then we'll see who of us is a bad player.”

Hux suddenly put down the soldering iron and, without looking at her, said:

“Rey, if you have any problems with Ren, please don’t hesitate to tell me,” his voice was very serious and she involuntarily looked at profile of a man sitting in front of her. His lips were tightly pressed, and his eyes were invisible looked at the chip. What was the reason for such a sharp change of mood, Rey couldn’t even imagine. What the hell with hoaxes? She was being tired of this infinite duality.

“Good,” she answered simply, knowing that she would never take advantage of this offer. Despite all their friendships, complaining of one teacher about the other seemed to her humiliating and unworthy. “So, what’s about Thursday?”

Nevertheless, he turned his head towards her, somehow gazing too closely at her face, as if he wanted to see something there. And then he nodded.

“Granted. I’ll grab Phasma if she’s not busy.”

Later, at home, reading the abstracts, Rey thought that Professor Hux had been obviously hinting at something. But the hidden meaning of his words eluded her over and over again, forcing to spin on a chair from the impossibility of catching of an insidious thought by the tail. Damn all the men! Why can’t the words of them expressed more specifically?


	4. Chapter 4

The first morning of September brought with it a fresh breeze and endless blue skyway. Just yesterday, suffocating heat hovered over the city, that felt like a grease spot in haze heat, and today the crystal clear air seemed to hum a melody, expecting something new. Wednesday slid by for Rey like a whirlwind of day-to-day hassles, projects and graduate qualification work. Then it was time for Thursday, and the anticipation of a pleasant evening with happy crew awoke with it. Finn was obviously still being asleep when she left their small apartment. Cool wet monsoon air was invigorating, full the scent of freshly backed pastries and coffee from a Rastaman-like bakery in the neighborhood. Rey eagerly inhaled these smells, heading for the bus stop. There was enough time today, and she could enjoy the morning traffic jam with wonderful music and decaf coffee. The spirits were riding high: the heat had been over, she’d slept well, her heart did not hurt, and there was no professor Ren within these two days. Life, you are so stunningly beautiful! Even the traffic jam on Longfellow Bridge seemed insignificant to Rey as compared to its usual scale. And that’s why in the she entered building on Vassar Street, where the multifunctional Research Laboratory of Electronics was located, earlier than planned. Exchanging heyhowdy-greetings to laboratory assistants in the biotechnology classroom, Rey sat down on her favouriteoffice stool, taking out a laptop, connecting it to a digital installation and pulling on nitrile gloves.

  
Thanks to her academic credentials in engineering, Rey was able to carry out experiments at one of the most advanced experimental departments of the institute. Her NASA customers paid up all the necessary front-end loading and survey, so she could afford to rent her own equipment for continuous research. The classroom, where she spent time every Saturday, was large, airy and bright. It was outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment and sensors that students of the institute have used at least once and a lecture corner and stands for various devices were a perfect match for educational purposes

Once, Hux was suggested to develop a database for genome sequencing. However, he was too busy with his current projects and decided to entrust the matter to Rey. It happened in sophomore year, that became the point of departure in their lingering and effective co-operation. Of course, she was frightened all to pieces at first and made excuses just not to bog down in terra incognita of this unknown for her academic field, her teeth really chattered uncontrollably because ofthe any nerd’s worst nightmare – disability to handle it successfully. After all, she was just a program engineer and was tied up with bio-engineering with only one matching word! But Hux urged her gently to get acquainted with the project closer, and, a couple months later, Rey discovered that she’d fallen for the task and good look-out for her in the not so distant future. Without a moment’s hesitation, she enrolled in courses in biotechnology, nanomaterials and cell engineering in the middle of the semester.

  
That year passed as in a fog, while she had been rushing between classes, projects and job. Rey’d slept no more than three to four hours a day, trying to make up for lost time with her new group-mates, taking subjects that she hadn’t even planned to do. She’d dipped her toe into new knowledge and was so inspired with it that she hadn’t paid attention even to ingravescent pains in her heart. And that was quite a reckless step, because once Rey just fell off with a heart-attack right in the middle of the presentation about successfully accomplished work. Right in the meeting with Hux. By good fortune, Finn had been taking a nap near the computer in that moment and had correctly determined her health condition. Rey grinned, imagining once again how Professor Hux’ face was look like, when he was standing there, watching open-mouthed what had just happened. While one was writhing in pain on the floor, another came in line with a cheerful beat “Stayin’ alive” on the phone without delay and tried to make out if there was atrial fibrillation. Lying few hours later in the intensive care unit in the hospital, which was located right on campus, Rey had been listening to the hysterical yelling of Hux. Within her remembrance, it had happened to him for the first time. The traitor Finn had thrown her under the bus, telling her entire life-story from the moment of fertilization. Then their day and night difference in social status, professional ethics and personal development were left in tatters: Hux was screeching in real like a child at the whole department, how careless and reckless Rey was.

However, she hadn’t taken offence at that. How could she be angry with someone who scared out of his wits? Holy cow! Armitage Hux was so frightened to a tremor of tongue! At that moment Finn just sat bending the brows and letting the professor’s temper and anger be close to surface. By Finn she was hauled over the coals a little bit later, at the return from the hospital.

  
It was then Rey’d realized what main man and good friend Armitage Hux was. As soon as she was transferred to a recovering patients ward, teachers one after another visited her, bringing necessary books, summaries and speedy recovery wishes. Even the academic advisor of their course paid a visit, promising to resolve the issue with missed labs and tests. She did not know, with what beg, borrow or steal her director of Diploma was able to convince them that this student deserved such a special attention. Rey was too shy to ask, and Hux never brought up this subject. In Massachusetts, put it mildly, it wasn’t accepted to “have somebody in tow”. Ha! C'mon, here even death was not a good reason to miss any important lab class. Within these years of training, there was a no-holds-barred death march. Got to the finish line? Did you manage it? OK, get a move on then. You can’t? Don’t even think you are tired ... Then maybe you should change the University. Aspiration target: right now.

So, the incident did not make Rey rein in activities for her study creating. But Finn, so did Hux too, insisted, she was supposed to undergo a medical examination regularly at the university medical center. Thank God, insurance covered medical “edifying” guidance of Dr. Chen and new drug variations. Once, every six months, Rey was hung with sensors, put on a treadmill or put on an stationary cycling, and all the readings, which could only be done, were taken. Unfortunately, the results were disappointing: doctors insisted on surgery, Hux - on vacation, Finn - on changing the attending physician. A soulless ultrasound machine used to show every time ever larger sizes of damned right ventricle. But that didn't any matter to Rey. What was the point to worry if she wasn’t able to change circumstances and the way of thing that faced her at the moment. She had no money for cardiac surgery, no time for it either. And besides, no one will mess around the whole year with a girl who wouldn’t have even sneezed without any help. The hole in her chest wouldn’t solve her problems, but only created new ones. Friends understood that, worried about her, but they couldn’t do anything. And therefore, since about the same time on the phone of their dear professor the fateful song of Bee Gees also has been settled down. Just in case.

  
The program quietly strummed on a fiddle, taking Rey out of distraction: preliminary analysis was finished. Her fingers slid over the keys of the laptop, starting with the debugging algorithm. A signal of a molecule passage through a nanopore slowly loomed on the monitor, and she was astonished again by the mathematical beauty of this invisible world. She didn’t believe in God, but she believed in such a perfection of the human mind, its superiority over self. What power did appear in people with the opportunity to influence their own gene set! NASA and Hux wanted smart system of DNA strand recognition? They would get it, and Rey would do fine with it without any help of Ingenious Asshole. Damn it, she could write any code on anything whatever. Inspired in spades, Rey opened the book by Peter Seibel and saturated herself in the basics of intellectual programming.

Having gone in the afternoon to a cryptography lab class and received another project with the option of its presentationin front of the whole group, Rey returned to the laboratory. Day by day Rey was fully aware that this year would have been even more stressful than previous one. Teachers committed to saddle students with up to the gills, preparing their nestling-students to flutter out from the old haunt into the brand new world. How to be in time with anything and everything, Rey had an obscure view of it, but she was not going to deny herself pleasures. Otherwise she could be not right in the head and get hooked on antidepressants and stimulants, like one third of the master program students and certainly every second freshman.

  
Oh, poker... Finn and then-tutor of the Catholic boarding school, Mr. Edwards, taught a little pupil to play this card game. For two evenings they’d written a primitive training program that malfunctioned on such old machines, but it’d had its effect. Rey giggled, imagining what the Mother Superior would have said when she’d seen what all of them had been attending “such important for the girl’s future” courses. Later, having met sticky-fingered former gaming dealer Rose Tiko at the club of Unkar, Rey soaked herself into the fascinating world of this card game. Thanks to her new friend, she was updated on a couple of honest tricks and much more dishonest gimmicks and flimflams, learned to deal out cards pretty and almost perfectly mastered her poker-face. Unfortunately, all of these tricks did not work in the game with Rose herself, but the rest could still be recouped. At first they’d met at poker just as three together, then Hux found out about their gatherings and dragged Phasma there, to everyone's surprise. Rey became friends right away with his graduate student: catty women just couldn't help passing by each other. And when these two acid-tongued ladies turned out to be at a distance of interaction from each other, everyone tied to hide away from their eyes in a hurry.

  
So, last year Thursdays there was poker time for their small company. Unkar already knew about it, and therefore, noisy swinging parties were never given once a week in the evening at Takodana. The old tricky-man invited some jazzmen, paid for the first round of drinks on the house and left them alone at the table in far quiet corner. Rey wouldn’t be surprised to find out that this old fox was shedding a manly tear like a melting into tears mentor, watching his foster-daughter violated the law Of God.

  
And today, having approached the club a little earlier than the others, she kissed her named uncle in chubby cheeks, took out poker chips with a deck of cards and went to their table. Having laid out all her simple goods and chattels, she plopped down on a chair, awaiting her friends, who were late again. Finn came first. Swear like a bargee with someone on the phone, he pecked his friend on cheek and waved welcome to Unkar and Maz. Her buddy wasn’t splurging on swear words, brushing down his interlocutor. Rey sighed. Arnold, Finn’s current boyfriend, seemed to drop a bundle somewhere and now he was putting the bee on it from his partner.

“It’s time for you to stop this charity, dear,” she said, as only her friend switched off the phone and snapped the devise on a white tablecloth.

“I keep telling it myself every time ...”

“But then his pretty face and ... wait, how did you say there? ‘The soulful eyes of the ocean blue’, work you for sympathy,”- Rey finished with a snide remark.

“What a smart ass!”

“Henpecked man!”

They laughed, admitting each other's truth. Rey really was pretty harsh in the expression of her own thoughts, and Finn was too obsessed with blondes. Though with this of his current boy-friend, it seemed, everything was seriously and for the long haul.

“What news by now?” She asked, shuffling a deck of cards for lack of anything better to do. The guy leaned back in his chair, his fingers were locked together behind his head.

“It’s a total academic clusterfuck,” he said, looking at the ceiling.

Rey held out her open hand.

“Give me five, brother in misfortune. I have no idea how to be in time with all this stuff.”

With the most tragic expression on their faces, they sealed the common misfortune with a handshake, after that Hux, who appeared in the company of Phasma, interrupted their conversation. Rey admired again how incredible Tart was in everything: mind, beauty and growth. Men shook hands, and the graduate student sank into a chair next to Rey, tiredly blowing off her blond lock from the eyes.

“I’ve had my first lecture today,” Phasma doled out news to Rey in a dramatic whisper. “I thought I would stutter like an idiot, but nothing happened.”

“Wow. Freshmen?” Rey looked respectfully at her friend.

“Nope,” the girl threw a chewing gum in her mouth. “Take it higher - sophomore!” She raised her finger, showing the significance of this event, then could not stand it and burst out laughing. Rey smiled back.

“So.” Phasma struck the table with her palm, drawing attention to herself. And continued when all eyes turned to her. “We begin?”

“Rose, as usual, will be later,” Rey answered, reading just received message from Tiko. “Let's start without her, and then zero the bets.”

“Well, that's a deal!” Tart nodded and picked up the deck. “Just get some drinks, but for now I’m dealing the cards out.”

“And who died and made you boss?” Rey grumbled, but submit docilely.

“I’ll have a beer,” Finn said vividly.

“Me too,” Phasma and Hux nodded at the same time.

“Oh, it’s just some kind of Oktoberfest!”

“Go, woman,” her childhood friend gave Ray a delicious slap on her ass in complete of German traditions, for that one hewas given immediately a slap upside the head. Then the offended maiden proudly walked away to Maz. The music beganto play, and Rey sighed happily. Good place and good time to start.

“Up the stakes,” Phasma laid out two fifty bucks chips on the table.

“Count me out,” Rey put the cards on the table, leaning back in her chair and looking around. They were playing only for half an hour, and she already managed to blow it. Despite the fact that stakes were scanty, her feeling were hurt. Hux chuckled maliciously once again.

“You see, Rey, you cannot bluff absolutely,” he remarked, laying out his chips on the table. “I return.”

“I'm afraid, professor, but your pinocle is not as good as you want to show,” Rose responded, having joined them ten minutes ago. Rey sipped the water, waiting for Tiko's deductive calculations. And she was not mistaken. “This is your second time you thumbed the second card on the right, as if thinking whether to discard it or not. Moreover, you don’t touch the left two, which means you have a pair there. Now you think that if you nevertheless dump the dubious one, then a second pair may come, or maybe even a triplet. Then you glanced at the chips, evaluating your bankroll and deciding whether you can support your stake. So, you are not sure of your combination and do not rely much on a new card, but you have taken a chance. Sounds like you are a desperate daredevil, professor!”

  
“Did I say I won’t play with her again?” Hux noticed without raising his head and addressing his reply to anyone, but a smile slid across his lips.

“Every time,” everyone exclaimed in unison.

The fun was in full swing when Armitage’s telephone rang.

“My apologies for that,” he apologized, tapping the screen for an answer. Others set aside their cards, reaching for drinks or for chips. “At your service…”

Rey didn’t listen much to the conversation, watching the trumpeter on stage, but it made her pay attention to the cues reaching her. Just a couple of moments and a chill crept down her back.

“No, is that so urgent? I mean tomorrow ... they said ... Shit, you why haven’t you told me about it before... I don’t read emails, you know, I have Phasma for it.When you sent the letter ... Kylo, you make me sick! If you need it so urgently, just come, and I’ll autograph at least on a patent application, at least on your forehead ... I'm in "Takodana", it’s ... ah, you know? Well, good ... No, I'm not drunk. Not to the extent that I wouldn’t be able to put a cross in the signature column.”

Hux threw the phone angrily on the table.

“Why haven’t you said that I needed to sign the application? He accused just approached Phasma. She calmly looked at her boss with her cornflower eyes, in which no drop of intoxication splashed, took a sip beer and slowly answered.

“I’ve said professor. And besides, I’ve even put it on the table with yellow sticker and text ‘Just sign it’. I dare to note that I am already fulfilling secretary duties at no extra charge, and monitoring of your sclerosis is definitely not my concern.”

The teacher blushed, and Rey rolled her eyes. Different day – the same old stuff. Despite his discipline, clarity and his state beeing organized, Hux's personal papers were being constantly in absolute chaos, definitely living rather more in accordance with the laws of Universe* than of the former military.

“Can we continue now?” Finn asked displeasedly, who blew two laps in a row and now was longing to take revenge.

“Have you got a good combination?”

Rey shoved a friend in the side and reached for her cards, however, but stopped halfway when a shadow fell on their table. And might damnation take on her if she did not know to whom that shadow belonged. In fact, she could not even to look at a fantastic contorted image, because the perfume greeted her and gave the game of the newcomer away. God, was Ren able to tunnel like an electron? To travel at the light speed? To make a leap in hyperspace? Or there was just a black hole in his pocket? How the hell was he able to approach the club so fast ... A thousand questions puffed Rey up, but she had to check herself pretty sharply not to display her confusion overset her. She stole a glance at, realizing that no one but her had noticed the uninvited guest. Leaning back in a chair, Rey afforded the luxury to take a deep breath for a second and grinned arrogantly.

“Good evening, professor,” she said, still looking only at her cards. Friends got off from theirs, looking up.

“Ah, Kylo!” Armitage stood up, shaking a friend's hand. Rey noticed that Finn did the same in silence. She even wondered what thoughts were running through her friend’s head at that minute. For sure, he compared what he saw with all the rumors and speculation that he had heard about this man before. They still had no opportunity discuss the professor’s personality in private, but after tonight, she was sure a friend wouldn’t have got her off. Rey noticed Finn’s eyes blinked appraisingly and grinned. Sorry, baby, but this guy wasn’t from your league, though... One never knows…

“Good evening,” Ren finally greeted softly, looking around the group. “Papers, Armitage.”

He held forth a small folder to Hux, waiting, the man would have stopped clapping his pockets in search for a pen. At the same time Rey tore herself away from card-gazing, examining the man opposite out of the corner of her eye. Ren was wearing a tailored suit that looked out of place in the club’s dim room. Because of the dull lampshade, the lamp, hanging from ceiling above their table, could not scatter the shadows that surrounded them outside the light spot. The reddish gleams from the high-tech luminaire flittered like spots on the professor’s face up and down, thereby making damn near an Astaroth **. Wild thatch of black hair highlighted the intimidating supervillain performance, and Rey inhibited her absurd desire to say the Lord’s prayer and to run after the Holy Water. Meanwhile, Ren, apparently tired of waiting for a friend to stop the ridiculous patting, and pulled out of his jacket’s inset pocket a fountain pen in one flowing motion. With a fine nib, of course.

“Ah, Professor Kylo Ren,” Phasma remarked maliciously, and saluted the man with her glass. “Are you in the mood to play with us?”

Rey turned round shortly to her friend, withering Phasma with a look. Hell, she’d had no idea that Tart was acquainted with this nightmare on the wings of the night. Phasma was being adept at giving the go-by, giving a welcoming smile at Ren. He examined their entire company one more time, his eyes lingering on obviously displeased face expression of his student.

“You seem to be in a hurry,” Hux remarked harsher than it supposed to be. And Rey realized that she was not alone in her “happy” feelings with Ren. Oh, how curious!

“I’ll send the documents in the morning anyway, so I’m not pressed for time up to that time” the professor said slowly.

“Then why was there such an urgency?” it seemed her research advisor was getting angry, a telltale sigh, it was time to bring all beer glasses for Hux to ought. But Kylo Ren was being phlegmatic and annoyingly calm when he looked directly into Armitage’s eyes.

“The papers are needed tomorrow. Of course, I could come to you just beyond seven o’clock in the morning, and you would be hardly glad to see me... Besides, your hand steadiness has already risen doubts as to. You don’t drink any more today.”

The last sentence was spoken in a peremptory manner that Rey looked at this annoying person in surprise. Fortunately, that one was eyeing his friend thoughtfully, checking the state of the last one. Wow, at least she and Professor Ren have concurred in the same opinion.

“You are such a bore,” said Hux, signing page after page. Finally, the last page was blessing by another signature squiggle and removed back to the file folder.

“So, Kylo,” Phasma did not abate. “Will you join us?”

“Poker? Ren looked carefully at their table, littered with chips and small money. Then he shrugged, looking for a vacantchair, and set it down between Hux the Grumbler and hushed Finn. Right there, opposite Rey. “Well, it’s the best entertainment tonight, offered to me.”

She sincerely tried not to look for a double subtext in such innocent phrase of a bored Good-time Charlie, but it seemed to her я right along there was a tang of the promise of something in his voice. It didn’t seem to have escaped from Rose, who jokingly told:

“I hope you won't cheat at cards?”

“Won’t I?” He gave a twisted grin, taking off his jacket and hanging it on the back of the chair. From the professor’s showin only one shirt, like a second skin, Phasma smacked lips, Finn swallowed nervously, and Hux stayed indifferent. After that this bastard slouched, cross-legged, and fixed Tiko with a stare. “We are going to play the most cheating game that you can ever imagine and you’re asking me not to play dirty? Ladies and gentlemen, this is too... boring.”

Everyone laughed, and Rey pursed her lips, unable to have fun. She pulled back a little further from the light, hiding her face, flushed with an embarrassment blush, in the semi-darkness. By time, Rose clicked her tongue, threatening her interlocutor with the cards.

“The words of a true cardsharp. Just be careful, sir, I will keep an eye on you.”

From further watching of the playful pick between the two, Rey was distracted by Phasma.

“Could you help me with drinks?” and, having waited for a return nod from Rey, she turned to Ren. “Would you like to have something special or, as usual, coffee?”

“Just coffee. Thank you, Phasma.” He nodded gratefully, picking up the deck and compulsively shuffling it. Finn finally relaxed and collected chips, discussing something with Hux.

They were standing at Maz’s counter when a friend sank into a bar stool, throwing another pillow of chewing gum into her mouth. Phasma’d just quitted smoking and therefore she had been downing Dirol all day long, just changing one habit to another. It was a wonder how her stomach could withstand such amount of sweetener ***.

“You don't like Ren,” Tart said. As usual, she claimed and didn’t ask polite and suggestive questions. Rey looked at her friend in surprise.

“What made you think that?

“You don’t look at him, you don’t speak in more polite way, and you aren’t glad at my suggestion.”

“Hux, too, so ...”

“Everything is clear with Armitage,” Phasma dismissed it vaguely. “And here is your reaction surprised me.”

“Is he a Ming time vase so that everyone admires him?” Rey grimaced annoyingly.

“Well, he usually does. He is an excellent teacher, a great company, good friend... Well, that aside, Kylo is very good, I would say, perfect. At by the way, a couple of good bling stuff from him are still lying somewhere in my wardrobe,” Phasma sighed dreamily. And Rey stared at her friend with all her eyes, finally comprehending the whole deep meaning of her reaction a few minutes earlier.

“Just don’t tell me you slept with him ...”

“God, Ray. I haven’t thought you are such a prude!”

“I'm not, I’m just talking about professional ethics,” she said, wishing to shake up her friend a bit, but she did not listen to Rey, continuing her big talk.

“Seriously, to pass over an opportunity, represented by a man of the same height with me, would be next door to blasphemy, don’t you think?” Tart laughed and winked surreptitiously.

“I won’t hear a word of it,” Rey muttered, shaking her head. “Why have you even started a conversation about him with me?”

“I don’t want your prejudices and principles to serve you a dirty trick in the future.” Ren can give you a good career start ...”

“Through a casting coach? Thanks, I'd rather not.”

“No,” Phasma winced at Rey’s remark. “That’s not necessarily so. If you quicken his interest, he will help you just for no special reason. He does it just for the fun of it: he looks for talented and bright-minded people and set them up in the world. Have you heard about Jim Campbell? So, he is now at Intel, managing the architectural solutions department. And I don’t think he got there through Ren’s bed.”

The friend raised a perfectly tinted eyebrow expressively.

“And, seriously though,” she sighed dreamily, “it’s a case of swings and roundabouts: you just don’t know what you are rejecting.”

“No proposal was offered to me yet, so there is nothing to reject.

“He looks at you. You can consider it as an offer.”

With these words, Phasma took up one single cup of coffee for the damn professor with a proud port and left the corner, leaving a tray with glasses for Rey. Shit! Blowing a long breath of disappointment through her tightly clenched teeth, she grabbed drinks and headed towards the poker table, hot on the heels of her friend.

“It's pretty stupid to pretend that you have a full, when, in fact, there are just lousy couples in your arms,” Finn noted, continuing their conversation today and discarding three cards at the same time. Having his fingers crossed, he took new from the talon.

They had been playing for almost an hour, and during that time something had slipped. No, Rey didn’t take into account the decreasing number of their chips on the table. At least, she had been already too tired to evaluate, calculate and keep a straight face.

It was just... yes, her eyes weren’t playing any tricks on her certainly at all, but the whole company had inducted Ren into their small society. Phasma was frankly and open flirting with her ex-lover, Rose found a good company, worth to discuss cheating tricks, Finn just enjoyed men’s society. Even Hux relaxed within the time. Most likely, intoxication with alcoholic beverages slowly left his head together with his explosive temper. And now at the table, all of them shot the breeze, but Rey did not take any part in such conversation, preferring to watch the players.

“I disagree,” Ren thought for a moment, and then with a firm hand and with an impenetrable expression, he threw off all the cards, picking new ones. “There is good deal better and fun to bluff by increasing the stakes until the players panic, laying off. And then the daredevil gets the bank.”

With these words, he threw two a-hundred-dollars black chips on the table. Surely, that meant only ten bucks in their game, but they’s almost never made such stakes, playing more just for fun.

“I raise the bet.”

“Now it would be interesting to know,” Rose said, laying down her cards and passing the game, “are you lying, pulling the wool over eyes, or are you desperately lucky?”

“Oh, don't say that! No lies. Just pure bluff. ” He smiled dazzlingly. Rey looked at her cards.

“It seems to me,” she finally ventured to open her mouth, “a man who’s only busy with the fact he is trying to reveal the bluff, relying on a bit of luck and instincts, so he’ll have lost already in advance. I support.”

She laid out her chips.

“There's as much as science, Rey, to read poker gestures. Not all bluffs are bluffs,” Rose noticed.

Finn, Hux and Phasma, who already had gone through a round of bidding before the professor raised bets, put on considering cap about it, peering into their cards. Finally, all three reached for their chips at the same time, putting them in a common pile.

“Let’s open it.”

Two pairs of Finn, Hux’s Flush, Phasma’s Straight were laid on the table, Rey laid out her quad and looked up at Ren, waiting for his cards. A moment later, there was a royal flush on the table.

“Oh, shit!” Finn exclaimed amused. “There is no such thing! You have discarded every last. It's either damn luck, or you’re really cheating, professor.”

“Who knows, who knows,” the man stretched, loosening stiff back muscles, and glanced at clock. “I'm afraid I have to leave you. Tomorrow morning I need to take the documents.”

“Yes, we are finishing, too,” Hux nodded, getting up and pulling on his jacket.

“Could you give me a lift to the house?

“No problem,” Ren got up, too. “I'll be waiting for you on the street. Thanks for the game and pleasant company.”

Phasma saluted him with an unchanging glass, Finn and Rose simply nodded, collecting their stuff. He waved goodbye, and then disappeared into the semi-darkness of the hall.

“I'll go get some air too,” Finn whispered to Rey. “Besides, Arnold’d already phoned. I'll be waiting for you on the street.”

“Just go,” Rey nodded with a crooked smirk. “Call a taxi, Romeo.”

“Go to hell.”

Phasma and Rose finally decided to show their consideration and carried away the trays, full of empty glasses. Rey wasalone in the hall, thoughtfully collecting chips and cards, scattered around a table. She was just putting neat plastic stacks in a wooden box when a voice thrilled next to her.

“I can't find my phone,” - Ren muttered, looking around the half-empty table. Rey startled in surprise.

“Are you sure you’ve left it here?” - She was not distracted from her job.

“Call me. Probably it’s fallen out of my jacket in this damn gloom,” said Professor. He really looked puzzled. Rey pulled out her phone silently and looked at him questioningly, deliberately ignoring the obvious invitation to dialog. He quickly dictated her eleven digits, and after a couple of seconds the screen of his mobile lit up on the floor in real. Ren picked it up quickly and turned around, fixing the gaze at her.

“Thank you, _Rey_.”

Her name roared gently on his tongue and landed, it seemed, somewhere in the solar plexus. Hands froze halfway, but Rey forced herself to continue collecting chips with an incredible effort of will. Well, no, she wouldn’t give him a single chance.

“Thank you, _Professor Ren_, thanks God, we’re not relatives, we didn’t drink brotherhood didn’t sleep and didn’t save each other’s lives so you have no right to call me by name, - she answered coldly, looking up at him. He examined her thoughtfully, and then grinned, fingering the golden cubes of a keyring.

“Except of relatives, the rest can be turned into reality?” The smile turned into a predatory grin, and Ren bent over to her across the table, glaring at her face. “But I'm wondering which one Hux’s made a reality of?”

“It’s not of your bus ...” she began, but he interrupted her.

“No, don't give an answer. We’ll keep an air of mystery and intrigue. It _does_ become you to be holy maiden like that, _Miss Teedo_.”

With these words, the professor turned abruptly around and vanished into thin air again, leaving Rey to boil with rage. What a bastard! He is bound to leave the final word with. She glanced at the screen with his phone number, and then, with no way to tell, kept the number. For one tiny snip of a second, and the phone number got ‘Death on two legs’ *** as a ringtone. Rey grinned insidiously. Small change, just blip, but pleasant one, although, of course, the professor is not going to call her.

Late at night, already lying in her bed and reading some particularly shitty article on nanotubes, she jerked off the unexpected vibration of the phone. Muttering something about crazy friends, Rey reached for the smartphone, lifting it off the floor. Looking at screen, she cursed very dirty for the first time in a long period. It sounded like Death came to takeher soul. And she finally realized how stupid she had been taken to such primitive trick. Sakes alive! He didn’t even have to try to make the naïve girl to throw herself under the bus. Hell! She had to perpetuate this howling shame in a frame and spike it in plain sight in her skull box never to forget her cretinism. No, Rey could have guessed if she had at least a bit more experience in flirting and other nonsense, but ... Looking doomed at the once become hated devise by the apple-signed company, she growled with frustration at herself. There was the message glowed on the screen:

_"Sweet dreams, Miss Teedo."_

_____________________

  
* The second law of thermodynamics states that any system (people, stars, papers and etc.) seeks for maximum entropy (chaos).

** Astaroth is one of the top-ranking demons in the hierarchy of the Hell.

*** Sweeteners in large quantities are good laxatives. By chewing gum regularly, you can get diarrhea.

**** “Death on two legs” is a very specific song by “Queen”. Rey believes that the lyrics, like no other, suits Professor Кen and the whole situation.


	5. Chapter 5

The whole weekend and the next three weeks, Rey had been torn between classes and her job, trying to be here, there and everywhere. The weather had been breaking up gradually, and sunny days gave place to increasingly coming cloudy, gloomy days; heavy clouds shut down the blue sky completely. And then heavy drops had been falling for hours by far empty alleywaysof Cambridge, where only ardent fanatics of a healthy lifestyle in raincoats were hitting wet paths and shallow puddles on their bicycles. The rush of the first academic school days phased out gradually, and proper power atmosphere hung over those present in the Fairchild campus on Vassar Street. Frequent and quite often unpredictable change of weather crushed Rey, causing despondency and headaches. In these cases, the only one who could tolerate her company was Finn, slipping in some smelly tea in the evenings with his never-failing kindness and tendance. She choked but drank because it warmed briefly frozen hands at least. Rey hated Boston autumn and winter times. And who will be delighted in their right mind with dank monsoons and madsnowstorms, which ever and again are replaced by powerful thaws. And every time when the rainy season and endless snowfalls were getting closer, Rey’s mood was the worst of the worst. She froze constantly: poor circulation of blood, pervasive inadequate night's sleep and asthenia did their job. She used to be freezing in the streets, open to all the winds, she was chilly in the classrooms, where windows were wide opened during the breaks, airing stuffy classrooms. Even in the lab, Rey cuddled with a warm system unit, snuggling up to his friendly metal side. And she did not crawl out winter sweatshirts, fleece sweatpants and slippers looked like a Chewbacca’s head from Star Wars at home. Finn joked that he could hardly tell the difference between her and a goose - a huge body, tiny head and flippers. Rey did not argue.

And now, wrapping herself in a giant scarf, presented by Phasma to the latest Christmas, Rey stubbornly resisted the swirling wet wind. She ran to the campus, where Hux’s lab was located, trying not to wet the already frozen feet. An umbrella in such weather was simply useless. Any attempt to hide under a piece of nylon could well end in sharing of the same fate as Mary Poppins. Real cold has not come yet, but the damn cyclones stroke to the marrow, sneaking under any raincoats, jackets and sweaters. She was already starting to get used to the constant shiver with cold and chilly hands: even the touch phone respondedby turns to them. And the hair, constantly getting caught in her mouth, became her personal curse, that forced to hide heavy locks in a sloppy falling apart bun. Besides Professor Ren was such pain in the butt too. Unfortunately, wind-squalls from the bay, raw weather and sheer lousy character of their lecturer did not cool the hot temperament of Melanie and the company. Rey watched with a sort of distant curiosity, how they, like a flock colorful birds, used to surround the teacher after every lecture, and tweet. She tried to masque her smile every time, watching Ren. Like a preacher in front of his flock of souls, he towered over the students.

“It’s strange you don’t belong to the zoo, Teedo.”

The voice of the principal geek of the course - Ted – pealed above her head after lesson. Pale-faced Jeffers, peppered with freckles, was somehow ridiculous and awkward, but tart-tongued and cheeky fellow. If any MTI hack happened somewhere in the area, it was a safe bet that Ted had a finger in the pie. Well, he could run in a business with both of his limbs actually, or even crank everything up by himself. So recently, someone replaced their dean’s door to the bulletin board. And hell, even Rey hadn’t understood what was wrong with it - everything was done so smooth, without a major hitch.

“Why should I be there?” She asked in a low voice, watching Ren with a happy expression on his face, who was doing his hair up, turning to Annette and answering a question. His locks drove crazy the female part of the course constantly. Now and then discussions about his “loose styling” broke out, and Rey felt a wave of nausea rolling over her. She wondered if he had his head baldly shaved, then would these praises run out, or would the chicks keep the conversation about the perfect shape of his skull?

“Rumor has it that all the girls are obsessed with him”, Ted shrugged, watching what was happening. They both were standing near the wall of a small class room, waiting for this act of elemental idolization of Professor Ren would melt away.

“The ability to speak has not been a sign of intelligence yet”, she remembered the phrase from the movie.

Ted snorted, appreciating the tease. And then he put his hands in the pockets of the shabby jeans, rocking from heel to toe.

“Resting douche face… Of course, it’s not my place to say, but he’s great specialist”, and, noticing Rey's interested look, explained. “I asked my father, he’s working for Fidelity. He told me a lot of stuff but I was mildly interested in ones. Well, it can be summarized to saying that Ren, like Johnny-on-the-spot, put his foot forward at one time and wrote cool intellectual programs for electronic auctions. He made a fortune in it and became as rich as Croesus. Since then defense ministry officials have run after him and danced attendance on him, or it might have been even earlier, while he was holing up in computer clubs. Something of that sort… I don’t remember…”

  
“What do you mean “holing up?” Rey stared in surprise at her fellow student. The picture of crumb geek sleeping in dubious computer cellars is out of the current appearance of the professor. She couldn’t wrap her head around the story.

“This is what I mean”, Ted barked, but then turned down his voice volume, noticing the professor turned his eyes to Ted. “So he lived in clubs until Snoke covered up for him. Where and why - do not ask, I have no idea. Okay, it’s time, off we go. These dumbs have already gone away. May the Force be with you, Ray Teedo.”

He waved off in the vein of a cinema hero.

“Screw you,” she snapped without a word, thoughtfully raising her bag and heading for the exit.

This conversation took place at the fourth lecture, after that Rey promised herself to search the Internet for files on their teacher. But cause of the workload everything remained in distant plans. Ren seemed to have left her alone by that moment, giving the ability to focus on his subject, and not on him as a subject. The professor did not appear in ‘Takodana’, and the only message from him hung unread in her phone. New ones, thanks to Allhallows, hadn’t still been received. But that fact didn’t bother Rey, she just had no time to think of such nonsense. His lectures had become muchmore intense, the material was getting more complicated, and the questions he posed to them were increasingly tricky. Acase in the last lesson was just to suffice to mention when the professor handed them sheets of blank paper and said:

“The essential ability to write a code does not make you good programmers. In conditions of total haste, it is very important not to lose one’s head and be able to approach with a critical eye to every line slipped your fingers. And so here’s everyone’s task and half an hour for its implementation. Choose any language, any environment convenient for you, but give me a decision. Why do you need it? You’ll find out its next class when I check your paper.

With these words, he distributed the printed task conditions to everyone. Having acquainted herself with the information, Rey blinked blankly. No, she had got it, what was needed to be done in the end. But ... just write a program right on a piece of paper? They hadn’t even had the opportunity to check or debug the code. Shit! Yes, even the syntax would have to be double-checked! Apparently, her classmates were tormented by the same thoughts, because a hand of curly-haired Jeremy rose into the air. The guy coughed, attracting the attention of the professor. Ren was distracted from his own laptop, raised his head and looked at the students.

“Do you have a question, Mr. Lee?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So, ask, or are you suggesting me to play charades with you?”

“Sorry, sir. Should we write a code right like that?”

“Like that – like what? Mr. Lee, you have a pen, paper, a task and your clear head. What else do you need to work?” the annoyance in the professor's voice sounded like a clang of sharpened guillotines. Jeremy hesitated and bent over his leaf.

Rey mentally shook her head. If there’s one thing she understood, it’s that Kylo Ren was behindhand in patience. The professor was particularly annoyed by mental slowness, when everything was obvious for him. He was a pretty impetuous person, and Rey had no doubt that he could commit any madness or frenzied action in a flurry of excitement or in a burst of temper. In of ordinary life, this trait was carefully hidden behind the mask of a successful genius and noble snob. But neither restrained boiling emotions, nor burning eyes had not escaped Rey’s notice, when Ren told them about the capabilities of artificial intelligence in machine learning, simultaneously quickly drawing reference points of the code on the board with a highlighter.

She looked at the problem condition once again and thought. If you act point-blank, then you could have taken a long time doing over it till doomsday, however ... And here it was as if she was pushed in liquid nitrogen. Oh holy cow! Rey raised her head, having thought out the puzzle, and met with a humorous twinkle in eyes of her professor. His left eyebrow went up playfully bewildered. One second, and she smiled dazzlingly at him. Then leaned over a blank sheet, covering it with a large rounded handwriting. She had work cut out for one, coming up with an elegant solution, but it was worth it. Challenge accepted, Professor Ren, bad cess to you!

The ingenious is always simple. And if there is no way to check the performance of your code - do an option in which there’s simply nowhere to make a mistake. Fewer lines mean fewer problems. All that was needed was to think a little more and a little further than the usual programming as "crossing mind”. This experience turned out to be a great lesson for young programmers, that, sad to say, not everyone understood. Therefore, next Thursday, during the lecture, the professor ripped and tore, giving a tongue-lashing to his students.

“Badly, very badly. You didn’t even try to use your loaf,” he scolded them, pacing in front of the blackboard and with his hands behind his back. Ren frowned angrily. “The hell with mistakes, but to give out the code on two pages what in fact you are able to scale the half is unworthy. Any employer will want you to find a beautiful and refined solution that he used to need oftentimes a day before. But instead, you throw him a curve like this?! You are spoiled children who rely too much on others, preferring not get your heads out of your butt and focus today. Do you really believe if you have installed ‘Sublime Text’, and the thing would be as good as done?”

He grabbed a pack of their papers, shook them and then threw it back on the table in the heat of the moment. Rey saw her classmates squeezing into chairs, and sighed. Infrequently at the University, they got such grue from teachers. The professor fumed for a while, calling every name in the book. Then he came on to a new subject, showing simplification options on his own examples. After a lecture, Rey was one of the first to fetch her work from a crumbling pile and ran out into the corridor, where she was caught up with the hopscotched Ted.

“That's rotten bastard,” he exclaimed in a fit of anger, adjusting himself to her steps. “Teedo, well, tell me, what do the girls see in him? Apparently, this topic kept the guy after.”

“Well,” Rey scratched her nose thoughtfully, stopping and leaning against the wall. It was kind of hard to talk in motion for her. “Exalted face with a touch of vitiosity, burning with internal flame eyes and locks, fluttering black as pitch.”

“What?” The guy was momentarily rendered speechless with surprise, looking at her as insane. But noticing her quizzical glance, he gave out a horselaugh. “Shut the front door! What a nonsense! So then, such exalted hair and burning vitiosity don’t inspire you? Or you prefer girls to us?”

“Go to hell,” she smiled wearily. She wanted to lie down and fall asleep, but not to stand there, discussing such nonsense.

“Oh, I wish I knew how to hack him on something, that would be great...” Ted spoke dreamily. “But he doesn't even have an office here. Just came, scolded, yelled and backed off... Asshole!”

“I know what car he has got”, Rey said vindictively. Her classmate’s eyes  
rounded up enthusiastically.

“Oh yeah baby! And what is it?”

“Mercedes AMG, black series, you know, with the wings of a seagull instead of doors”.

“No shit!” Ted whistled.

“If that helps you, go ahead”, Rey nodded generously.

“Baby, I owe you one,” the guy gave a sweeping bow and, obviously, his head was full of crazy ideas, when he headed further down the corridor.

Rey just shook her head. She really hoped that no one would know about her being integral to one of next student tricks and hanky-panky. Under "nobody", of course, Ren was implied by a wink and a nod. And only at that time she drew attention to the wall opposite. Instead the stand with a schedule, a poster in full height and half width suddenly flaunted there, depicting time-darkened masonwork. There was inscription in red letters with supposedly bloody smudges over drawn bricks:

_“The secret of warp-engines is revealed! Star Trek enemies, stand in awe!”_

“What's this?” Rey said to Lee, who also stopped near her and nodded at the present hack of students.

“Ah, ‘Star Trek’ fans were at odds over with adherents ‘Star Wars’ again yesterday. It was said they’d even had fight-battle” he ran a rapid eye over the inscription, and his face wrinkled skeptically. “I can’t still get it what the difference is there. It’s all about stars…”

“Sacrilege commiting are you, young Padawan. A lot of nonsense in you felt have I.”

“Oh, God, Rey! And you have to go and do the same!”

With these words, Lee turned around and headed toward the elevators, shaking his head. Surely he was disappointed in his classmates once again. He was like that classic nerd from children's comics.

Having already approached the lobby of the campus, she took a sit with an apple in her hands on the latest exhibit item, a wooden one this time. Rey found it difficult to say what exactly it was, but incomprehensible compositions filled the main hall in a multitude. Pulling out her work, she ran her eyes over notes that highlighted green with neon spots on ordinary notebook paper. Nothing special, just a couple of syntactic inaccuracies and comments the professor disliked. And then she stared in surprise at the rating “A-“ in large print. Well, well ... who would have thought that Ren would have a fit of generosity, especially after today's grue. Rey was about to fold a leaf and put it in a bag, as her eyes caught on the lines, seen in the very bottom of the page. The ink was blue, and was barely noticeable different from her own. Rather, a fine, slimy handwriting with that the postscript was made was striking. She unfolded the paper again and read the text:

_“Perhaps I should arrange more often such tests. Then there is a chance that you would definitely read my posts. Like now. Miss Teedo.” _

For a few moments, Rey sat dumbfounded, staring at these provocative lines, then growled furiously. Having crumpled an innocent piece of paper, she sent it with an aimed throw to the litter bin. As if in real she could see how this damn asshole was making fun at her expense at that moment. Rey had never been so close to the feeling that usually people called hate. Only one thing still stopped her - she had no idea why this person chose her as his victim, but because it had already happened, there were no more doubts. She would certainly get to the heart of the matter and then would be able to with a clear conscience to hate him for the rest of her entire life.

Rey bite her teeth into an apple out of spite and was already up from her improvised seating as a pain shot through her chest. With a hiss exhaling, she folded up like a jackknife, clutching her hand where the heart was beating unevenly. The green fruit fell down from her flinching fingers on the floor with a thud and rolled somewhere under the unknown exhibit item. Rey gasped frantically for breath, and with her other hand rummaged in the bag in search of a bottle with nitro-spray. Damn her eternal mess! Anything came across but a much-needed vial. Finally, under a heap of rubbish and old checks, at the very bottom of her duffel bag, she palmed a cool plastic bottle. With a trembling hand in the third attempt, Rey was able to inject the right amount of medicine under the tongue, choking on the gag because of its disgusting taste. Weakness and dizziness fell exactly in one and a half minutes as usual.

The only she needed was to pray and squeeze a smooth tree to numb feeling, not to faint on the floor at the same moment. Minutes lasted slowly, but still the clock was ticking, the medicine worked, the ability to manage her own body gradually returned to Rey. After a while, she felt again she was able to breathe without fear to say goodbye to her own life. Still being not up to the end from a sharp weakness, she tried to push the spray back into the bag, but she moved awkwardly, and the vial flew to the floor. There was no energy even for mental swearing. With a sort of tired curiosity, Rey watched how the red little traitor rolled away from her further and further until it suddenly nestled in a large male palm. With her total lacking luck it could not be even doubtful what was there next to these long fingers that picked up such “intractable” piece of plastic: the sleeve of the jacket appeared in view, and then Professor Ren himself. He went to her holding out an unfortunate bottle.

“Are you all right, Miss Teedo?” He asked, peering into her face. Rey mentally grinned: with a pale physiognomy covered with sweat, and pupils dilated from effective drugs, she looks like anything, but not good. However, it wasn’t his concern.

“Yes, everything is fine. Thanks”, she nodded, picking up the nitro-spray and touching his hand involuntarily. Damn, the professor was amazingly warm, and he was just burning hot for her chilly fingers. Rey jumped up in a hurry, picking up her bag and rushing to the exit. She didn't even bother say goodbye. His gaze was felt almost physically. The obsession was gone only when a glass door closed behind her and a veil of rain fell. This bastard would definitely bring her to a heart attack.

***

Sitting an hour later in Hux's lab, Rey wrapped herself in a scarf and watched detached how Phasma was brazing a microcontroller. Contact by contact, so meticulously she was doing her job, not paying attention to the caustic smoke of the liquid rosin. Finally Tart finished, turned off the soldering station and took off her protective glasses. Rey immediately extended her arms, warming them over the hot metal.

“You don’t seem to be your usual self”, said Phasma, leaning back in her chair and flexing tired fingers.

“It has been always the same”, Rey replied languidly. She was always a little inhibited after taking the medicine, and the heat and low pressure finally wearied her. Now she was overcome by sleepiness.

“Once you’ll have really done it, Hux is right”, the friend watched skeptically, how Rey was nodding from drowsiness.

“Risk is my second nature”, she grinned languidly.

“Don't play the clown,” Phasma grimaced. “You’d better tell, is there a poker game to be going next Thursday?”

“Of course, why are you asking?”

“So, Hux is going to the conference for a week.”

“He hasn’t told anything,” Rey was surprised, she even woke up a little from this news. Phasma only sighed.

“I suppose he forgot. I mean, he didn’t forget to tell you, but he must forget about the conference at all.”

The girls looked at each other and shook their heads simultaneously. Their supervisor rushed between students, projects, lectures and obscure pieces of paper for a new patent for the umpteenth time. What head should you have if you could forget your own name in such chaos?

“How's Ren?” asked Phasma, getting up and turning on the kettle, standing directly on  
a server hardware.

“Raging and fuming.”

“It’s like him. He cannot stand autumn with these winds”, she was silent for a while and then added. “Well, and stupid students too.”

“As is evident from his behavior”, Rey grunted, recalling today's lecture.

A slam was heard at the front door, and then Armitage Hux whipped into the room, spraying rain water from the umbrella and leaving wet marks on the floor.

“Coffee?” Phasma asked, without turning her head and without any special attention to anybody around.

“Yes!” He exclaimed, taking off his damp cloak and brushing himself off. “Hello, Rey.”

The girl waved her hand in a blank greeting.

“What happened to you?” - The professor stared at his student, assessing pallor and sleepy state.

“Pill-in-the-pocket”, Phasma answered instead, putting three cups on the table: two with coffee and one with tea for Rey. Hux frowned, but said nothing and disappeared in his office. A minute after they heard his voice, he was talking to someone on the phone.

“He is being all over me as if I were already dying,” Rey whispered, twirling a white cup in exasperation and warming cold fingers on hot ceramics.

“He has a right,” the blonde answered just as quietly. “You actually bring him in handsome royalties. NASA is one hell of a cash cow.”

Both snorted into their cups, taking their first careful sips. Hux returned to the lab and sat next to them on a high stool. Rey paid attention to even more sunken eyes and cheeks of her supervisor. Semester has just begun, and he already looked exhausted. Life at Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a struggle of a life and death.

“I daresay to remind you, professor,” meanwhile, Phasma began, without taking an interested look from her coffee “You have a flight to Dallas on Wednesday.”

“Pardon me?” the man started, as if he was waken up from his dream.

“Airplane. To Dallas. On Wednesday.”

“What for?” Hux didn’t get in. And the girls just rolled their eyes.

“The conference!” Rey could not stand it anymore.

“What the hell conf… Fuck!”

Wow! So, the professor forgot about for sure. He rarely allowed himself to manifest such emotions, preferringcomplete professionalism. The man rubbed his forehead wearily, pondering over something frantically.

“I didn’t even find a substitute for me for lectures, that's tough!” he muttered, thoughtfully taking a sip of a hot drink and biting instantly the burnt tongue.

“Lectures are not a problem,” Phasma gave the air. “I’ll have finished the lecturing, the only thing I need is just a schedule.”

“What would I do without you?” His green eyes shone with gratitude and warmth to this priceless person.

“You’d be swamped with work and starve to death,” she snapped. Rey grunted. “Just decide a question with your graduates. Every time when I take a look at what Rey is working on there, I break into a cold sweat of horror. I don’t even want to go into details of this slangwhang.”

“I’ll ask someone to hold a consultation instead of me,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe, Kylo would agree, he owes me one, by the way.”

Rey choked on tea and coughed cause of this unexpected statement, frontiers and disquieting apprehensions. She attracted the attention of the professor with it, and he asked, examining her carefully.

“How do you feel?”

She listened to her gut: there was no pain, drowsiness also receded gradually, so related weakness did too. Taking all things together, the condition could be described as satisfactory.

“I'm fine,” she nodded gravely. “By the way, I was waiting for you to show report layout.”

Hux waved his hand in an invitation gesture and headed for the office. They spent half an hour discussing what they should include in the presentation booth and what not. Finally, Hux was satisfied, and Rey had a clear vision of the restrictions, imposed by NASA on them.

“I could record a video-demonstration of the program. It would be easier to explain to every interested person how and what we are doing instead of an explanation in hand-waving terms. It helps us to make a presentation without quoting the code itself. I'll borrow Finn’s tablet and start a looped video running.”

“Great thought,” professor nodded. “By the way, how are you doing with intellectual tracking bases?”

“I'm working on it,” Rey said dryly, anticipating the next sentence of the supervisor.

“Professor Ren ...”

“No,” she interrupted Hux a little bit rudely. “Let me at least try to do it by myself. In the end, if I ever need to reproduce something, something like that, I want to be sure that I can do this.”

This explanation, apparently, satisfied the teacher, he slowly nodded in agreement. But he could not resist and remarked:

“Your pride does not fit very well with your upbringing.”

“Well, there must have been at least one reason why I didn't become a nun,” Rey winked mischievously and stood up, kneading a stiff back. Hux glanced at her somehow weird, but she did not attach any importance to it, she was just staring into the drenched rain window instead.

“Disgusting weather,” she muttered, feeling herself starting to freeze already in advance. It would take her forty minutes for a long journey in a cold bus and pretty dirty subway.

“Come on, I'll give you a lift,” Hux suddenly suggested to her. She looked at him in surprise and was ready to open her mouth to refuse. He preached her down, shutting her mouth just one argument. “You're on nitroglycerin. What if you fall asleep and leave somewhere in Winthrop area?”

The argument was appropriate, and Rey was so tired that she buried her pride in the very dark place and just nodded. And only after that she noticed how the professor relaxed. Wow, she didn’t notice how much he was worried about her health condition. Her heart lightened at this news. Such tendance was so touching that Rey felt a biting sensation in her eyes. It seemed that the medicine was to blame, definitely. Hux put on his cloak and, as a true gentleman, helped Rey put on her jacket. He even fixed her huge scarf she was wrapping herself, standing in front of a cracked small mirror in the hallway. Rey flushed red and hastened to hide her blushing face behind a high stand-up collar. They said goodbye to Phasma, who bent over her chips again with a soldering iron in her hands. She waved them without even raising her head. On the street, they had to run under a heavy downpour of rain without an umbrella, as an unexpectedly flurry squally wind threatened again to turn any careless passerby into a funkiller-nanny. The professor hugged her by the shoulders, preventing the student to drop, and Rey suddenly realized how tall he was. Her crown of the head barely reached his chin. An uninvited thought flickered that Ren seemed to be even taller, although she had never stood next to him so close. Heaven help her!

Having already been sitting in the silver-gray Volvo of Hux, Rey thoughtfully watched as stay cables of Longfellow Bridge were rushing through. Rain was beating the other side of the warm and cozy car, the wind was rocking mercilessly the suspension structure, causing a light wave of adrenaline. And then they dived into the Great Boston Tunnel. Only heaven knew what affected her - a flickering light, that she wanted to close her eyes and not to see that flashing orange and yellow, or the twilight of an underground that could not disperse even cause of the bright lantern lights. But nonetheless she fell asleep and woke up from a light touch to her face when they had arrived. Rey blinked blearily trying to figure out where the hell she was and what happened. Finally, when dim-out stopped floating, and she was able to make out Hux’s figure, who gently woke her up.

“You would definitely have gone to Winthrop,” he said, smiling. Then his hand reached her face hesitantly, tucking her wild hair behind her ear. It was embarrassing, very embarrassing, Rey’s face turned a deep crimson hue. But she couldn’t like that kind of care. Finally she pulled herself together and looked calmly into the eyes of her professor.

“But I would have admired the planes,” Rey blurted out in a return smile. “Thank you very much for the ride. I'll come tomorrow show you a report draft and video.”

“I’ll wait for it”.

Rey felt embarrassed again for some reason, said goodbye in a hurry and spilled out of car to pouring rain. Finding herself in a damp, musty porch, she skyrocketed to the third floor. As soon as she opened the front door to their apartment, pungent sour smell hit her nose.

“Lord! What a stink!” Rey exclaimed, keeping retching down.

She threw off her sneakers and looked carefully into the living room, that was combined with the kitchen, unwinding her scarf. Finn tinkered with some plastic containers. There were blue protective gloves on his hand, that cleaners used to use usually. He was just getting something out of the containers when his friend screamed. Unknown subject slipped out of a wet glove and flopped back with a loud splash. The guy cursed curiously.

“What a habit,” Finn focused his fingers were slipping on something again “to yell for any reason?”

“Sorry,” Rey repented, cautiously stepping closer and looking over her friend’s shoulder. A circuit board floated in the muddy, swampy liquid. The sight of it was pretty vile, and the stench was just “fantastic”. She muttered “I’ve always suspected that it’s not the board vitriol but the poisoning of people ...”

“Don’t mutter under breath,” he finally picked up a piece of textolite and carefully laid it out on a paper towel. “Do not touch it, there is hydrochloric acid.”

“I didn’t even think,” Rey stepped back, just in case. “Tell me, why it was impossible to do it at Hux’s, huh? There is an exhaust ventilation system at least! She opened windows, letting in fresh air and drizzle from a drop apron. Their apartment, located just under the roof of the old house, had always got its fill of heavy rain. You had to have indifference- and-couldn't-care-less attitude to fall asleep while rain drops were knocking wildly. Or just get quality ear plugs. Rey frowned when a puddle on the windowsill caught her eye.

“Have you seen what's going on outside? It’s a storm warning actually.”

“I had not only seen, but I’d been there. Finn, our window frame is leaking again.”

“Where?” a voice came from behind her. “Let me see it.”

He squeezed to the window and stared at the obvious evidence of her words.

“Damn it.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I'll get Arnold’s sealant today and seal it up tonight. I wish I got at the truth of the matter.” the guy looked skeptically around the frame, looking for leaking traces. Well, they’d had battles with this window every year. This damn old piece of wood used to find a new way to arrange leakage as if it took aim at them.

“It would be easier to change the frame,” muttered Rey, who began to freeze again, standing by the open sash.

“The landlord is ranged against it, you know. It will ruin the fucking "aesthetic appearance" of the house.”

She swore and headed for the sink in search of a rag, to remove this wet disgrace. Until late in the evening, Rey fiddled with her report, swapping words and twisting phrases. Saying everything and nothing is a subtle art, if you work for a closed-off organization. In the late evening, her head felt twice the size, and her eye lids hold on a lot of prayer. She escaped the necessity to put toothpicks under her eyelids by hair’s breadth. The wind hadn’t been going down the whole night, persistently trying to reach out to the residents of Boston with heavy drops of rain. But unexpectedly the morning brought silence, peaceful dawn and stink of hydrochloric acid with it.

“Finn! Plague on you!” Rey yelled, raising her head from the pillow and trying not to breathe too deeply. “If neighbors come to us with a claim, then I let them go inside without any hesitation. I’ll let them tell you everything you need to know.”

“Baby, you are very angry,” Finn said, looking into her room.

“I'm hungry, not angry!”

“Sorry, the kitchen is taken,” with these words a black-haired head hid behind the door, and Rey moaned annoyingly.

Having kicked herself out of bed with an incredible effort of will, she trudged into the bathroom, shivering with cold. Heating hadn’t been turned on yet, apparently the house keeper believed that it wasn’t cold enough on the streets and everybody needed to freeze their asses a little bit more. So she walked into the bathroom, dreaming to get warm under the hot shower jets, but instead, there were two basins waiting for her, full of fucking printed circuit boards. Printed circuit boards, soaking in running water. Instead hot shower, she stood and looked at these lousy pieces of textolite.

“Fi-i-i-inn!”

***

Rey was late again, running down the Main Street from the Kendal station. Whidding between people, puddles and cyclists, she crawled through a freshmen crowd who came on an excursion to the Cancer Research Institute named Koch, and turned onto Vassar Street. Her crazy marathon ended at the Cyclotron building. Rey leaned heavily against the railing, leading to the Edgerton Student Store. The store, in the full sense of the word, could not be called a store. But this place made it possible to acquire knowledge and develop any equipment, to construct the most fantastic tools so necessary for scientific research within the walls of the institute. From early morning till night, the sounds of machine tools for drilling, creaking metal and blows of something unknown on something even less certain used to reach your ears. For Rey, who accustomed to work with ready-made installations and more thin-running materials, Edgerton Store had always been a bit of an ancient alchemical lab, full of unknown sounds, smells and people, doing something over some piece of silver metal with solemnity. Taking the breath, she ducked into the next door that led to the sanctum sanctorum of the Massachusetts Institute – to Cyclotron.

Somewhere in the middle of a double class in quantum optics, Ray's phone started to vibrate demandingly. Trying not to attract attention, she took out such subject of communication and read the messages that flashed on the screen.

_“Today is Arnold’s birthday,”_ Finn wrote to her, who surely wanted to make amends for the morning incident. _“He's throwing a party at ‘__Supremacy__ Club’. Are you coming? He would be glad.” "_

_"’Supremacy’? Seriously? He hadn’t been able to choose something less __pompous__?_" she dialed quickly, while Annette, with whom Rey was doing laboratory-based work together today, was remediating the lens-installation.

_“Don’t you know Arnold? So are you joining us? He is asking, because he has to order soft drinks for you then.”_

_"I am. Let him know, I don’t have a present. _ _Well, m_ _y personal appearance in your girly pinky tea party is as good as the grace of Heaven."_

_“Roger. Little _ _shrew_ _."_

Rey giggled and put away the phone. After the lecture, she ran into the Hux lab to report quickly on the work done last night. She received endorsement for her furious formulations and was allowed to drink tea with Phasma. The Supremacy was one of the most Boston's prestigious gay clubs. Get there without patronage of one of its members was almost unreal. And the fact Finn's boyfriend had chosen this institution for his party, did not add points to him in Rey’s eyes, but at the same time it certainly didn’t ruffle Arnolds feathers. These cute boys are all so preoccupied with their own image.

Well, she liked going to parties in such places. The atmosphere of total friendliness had always reigned here, no one gave vulgar remarks, everything was quiet and decently. Do you want to - go dance, do not want to - sit and talk with anyone, about anything; if you’re tired, you can stay alone and no one will impose. There were no taboo topics and no radical statements made. The main principle of such companies sounded something like enjoy-yourself-and-let-enjoy-the- other.

Rey came half an hour after the party had already started, and the main congratulations had just started to be told. Quickly pecking on the cheek of Finn’s blonde friend, she instantly exhausted her vocabulary of wishes for a happy and long life. After that she was given a place on a sofa, hot non-alcoholic mulled wine was palmed on and she was left in a pleasant solitude. She watched the fun around and she was happy for a friend who bathed in his admiration for the birthday kid.

Time flew by, surrounding guests with a pleasant flair of ease and everyone's pleasure. Soft unobtrusive soul music poured from the speakers suspended under the ceiling. Rey, Finn and Arnold had an interesting conversation about foreign policy with one guy named Esteban, and she seriously believed it was a pseudonym. And therefore, none of them did not expect the appearance of a waiter with a bouquet of vulgar scarlet roses: red inflorescences like foolish blanks crowned excessively long stems.

“Miss Teedo?” The mannered boy turned to her. Rey was the only one girl today, not counting a couple of transvestites, so it was difficult to make a mistake.

“Yes, it's me,” she peered apprehensively at the crazy red broom, which one was hard to fit in the arm of a young man, who was rather tall.

“It is delivered for you,” with these words to her frank horror, a bouquet, that turned out to be unexpectedly heavy, found its way into Rey’s hands.

“Who did that?” She asked, stupidly staring at the intoxicate-smelling flower-buds.

“A courier boy,” the waiter shrugged. “Shall I fetch a vase, miss?”

“Y-yes, please.” Rey still couldn’t get it what the hell was going on.

“There's a note,” Arnold said unexpectedly, fishing a white card from somewhere in the depths of this nightmare.

For some reason, Rey took this unfortunate piece of paper with trembling fingers and unfolded it. For one minute she stared at the lines written with a familiar handwriting, and then broke out into abuse.

_“This way works, too,”_ Finn read the written and exclaimed in confusion.

“What kind of nonsense?”

Instead of answering, Rey rushed to her phone, not having an idea what she was going to do. How had this bastard found out where she was? It cannot be true that he chased her. It was just impossible and unreal, and why? Therefore this whole situation with notes and seemed to be ultimate absurd to her. But then a thought flashed through her mind, and Rey froze for a second, then opened the Facebook application deliberately in slow motion. And there it was. In alerts, there were three unread messages from the system. She flipped through the screen with a trembling finger and stared at the picture of herself, sitting on the couch, kissing Arnold on the cheek and laughing merrily with the birthday boy. Each photo gave a note on geolocation. Even the dumbest blonde would have guessed where Rey Teedo was at that moment. Fucking age of digital tech, damn Finn, who posted these photos, damn Mr. Asshole Supreme with his damn broom!

“Rey! Rey!” she heard her friend's surprised voice. “What's happening?”

“The complete shit is happening, my dear friend,” she said slowly, staring into space. Bouquet of roses? Seriously, professor, you’re more likely to expect a bouquet of sexually transmitted diseases!

“I don’t understand anything,” muttered Finn.

“Me, too, Finn. Me, too…”


	6. Chapter 6

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Rey didn't remember how she got home. She locked this disgustingly vulgar bouquet in her arms, while sitting in a taxi and boiling with anger. Finn and Arnold were trying the whole evening to pry into secrets about the unknown presenter, and what such strange message meant. But she kept silent, gritted her teeth from epicene fury and dreamed of beating one smart-alecky face with thorn stalks. There was no doubt that Professor Ren was taking the piss out of her for some reason. Because not a single person with, at least, a couple of collateral gyruses would fall away to such plain banalty and pabulum so seriously. Especially, Kylo Ren – this pompous motherfucker. Rey’d been ready to throw stupid flowers there,at the club, and even approached the litter bin. However, standing at the back door, she could not. She hadn’t been able to lift her hand to get rid of them. Moreover, they exhaled a truly amazing aroma. Roses were expensive and surprisingly ... imperfect, as it were. Exactly that thing was, what put Rey out of countenance in the very last moment. Usually, you expect plastic matte petals of perfect clone-like buds from such bunch of flowers. You couldn’t find, even with a magnifying glass, any speckle on glossy, wax coated leaves. And, of course, there would be a complete absence of any smell. But these ... they seemed as alive as they could have been a natural top of selection evolution, grown in a greenhouse.

Rey's fingers ran along the dry edge of a slightly blossomed rose-bud. The anger faded away, and it was replaced by decent thoughts that must not have flittered across the brain of a person who had been brought up in strict Catholicism like Rey. Why on earth was she pondering, if Ren had chosen them by himself or just ordered them in the Internet? And then quite unexpectedly, her imagination envisioned the professor, who was thoughtfully picking flowers for this wonderful disaster. Damn it! Had he been really looking for the ugliest eamples among stamped flower-soldiers of expensive romance? Oh yeah, of course, he had touchingly admired the natural beauty of defective roses. It sounded even more delusional than it seemed in her head, but here it is, the result. Fifty and one flower pulled her arms with impressive weight. Lord, had he chosen them by the number of states? And now how the hell to get into the nitty-gritty, what Ren was striving for? Did he hope that she would throw them into the nearest garbage can, or just hoped that Rey would be taking a closer look at them?

She desperately needed a personal cryptograph to interpret his actions. However... yes, most likely, she just thought up that to herself, ascribing her thoughts to Ren. She really wanted to see him not being half-baked in all shades and colors, but at least being human a little. Naive and silly Rey. Why did she need to look for something in him? And, most importantly, why? She was not going to chase rainbows the professor would repent all his errors and recant all the sins and retire to a monastery to become a Holy Joe. It was ridiculous and even wrong. She probably just never had to become very disappointed at people. And so she tried her best to make out something remotely similar to the crown of creation beyond the abomination of this person, like being no stranger to compassion, forgiveness and mercy, and true feelings. After all, Hux saw something in Ren and he sincerely considered him as his friend, didn’t he? And, last and not at least, as a great friend.

Rey signed, looking up from the contemplation of her personal flower broom and turning her gaze to flashing lights of lanterns, sign and advertisement boards. Professor Ren drove her nuts, embarrassed and roused her interested at one time. And the reason for such multidirectional emotions was that she couldn’t weave his behavior into a logical chain. He was so incomprehensible that she felt a brain itch to explore. Like any geek, Rey was unnerved by a riddle that didn’t stack within the standard model. Everything that couldn’t be algorithm-driven, was laid out by her into the components and dissected, showing a clear structure. Well, she was taught to look for non-trivial solutions even to ordinary problems. No matter, that the professor was a mysterious bastard, she would figure him out and do away with such mobbing once and for all.

Half an hour later, Rey put roses in a huge, cracked at the neck, flask, that Finn had got out of nowhere. Taking a step back, she appreciated the ridiculous sight and she realized with surprise that she had never been given flowers. God, indeed, it was the first bunch in her life. Usually the guys "pleased" her with something that didn’t extend beyond technological dominance. Her collection included a talking watch, a pocket stun gun and even a dancing banana. The sacred meaning of the last one Rey tried to comprehend by this day. So, the absurdity of the whole situation of today’s caused only bitter laughter, because even the stupid note angered her no longer. And, Lord, how nice it could be to feel like a real woman, not walking brains with boobs, just for a second at least. To feel it and then immediately to take a reality check: it wasn’t real, just only another insinuation.

All Saturday morning, Rey had a lie-in out of whole cloth, doing her job right in the bed. She completed a couple of urgent tasks from her clients, being carried away by the sight of a new young man in another porn banner. Dark hair to shoulders, an awesome taut figure, a heavy look from brows. Rey cursed. We'd been down that road before. After closing soon such shamelessness that caused her too vivid associations, she decided to enter the world from her blanket nest. Having taken a shower and making cheap and disgusting green tea, Rey approached the stove heavy-hearted. Finn was being still with Arnold, and therefore she had to fight for her breakfast alone. She looked into the cupboard, hoping to get off easy and feast on cereal with milk. But the product of cow lactation had already smelled funky, and there was no desire for Rey to go for a new pack. Then Rey stepped up to the refrigerator and... holy God! There were no words to convey her adoration. If she ever said a word against Finn’s smelly course projects, the century she wouldn’t have enjoyed his amazing home-cooked meals for centuries. She took out a huge pan with her favorite spaghetti in tomato sauce with from excitement trembling hands from the fridge. If paradise exists for real angels are there, some of them must be black-skinned. Judging by the volume food left for her, the friend was going to stay with his boyfriend for the whole weekend. After the finest breakfast in the world, Rey turned up the music and sat down for her program, preparing a video for demonstration.

The time from work to work flew incredibly fast, she was so carried away that she heard a phone call not on the first attempt.

“Did you find everything for your meal time?” Finn began without preamble. His voice was sleepy, and diction limped, interrupted by futile attempts to restrain yawning.

“Yes, thank you very much!”

“I didn't care about you,” he grumbled. “I just would not have wanted to come back to the ashes.”

“The important thing is that you’ll be back. The ambrosia won’t go far.”

An incomprehensible rustling and laughter of Arnold were heard in the receiver.

“When will I marry you off already, huh?” Finn told her with wintry humor meanwhile.

“When Gordon Ramsey is getting divorced,” she teased, but she heard only another ear-shattering yawn.

“Pills?”

“Already taken, mommy.”

“So, the apartment will remain intact, and even without a dead body in there. Well, safe home now, darling.”

And, without listening to her angry exclamations, Finn disconnected. Rey stuck out tongue at her phone and went to get ready. ‘Takodana’ and Unkar were already waiting for her.

The club greeted her with shadows and silence that won’t reign here much longer. Technicians set up the lights, cleaners and waiters scurried around, bringing to rights the tables and the dance floor. Rey squeezed through to Maz, who was busily arranging new liquors.

“As usual, Maz,” Rey nodded to her, and Maz put a glass on the bar counter.

“Since the creation of the world, this phrase has never sounded in relation to water,” Kanata ranted.

“And I hope it will sound no longer in this club,” she responded to the tone. Smiling at each other, they returned to their duties.Rey examined the hall meticulously when first visitors pulled into the "Takodana". DJ has been annealing some of his own mixes, warming up the audience before the t evening, full of dancing and music asserts itself. Rey liked to catch one the very moment when the club’s half-empty hall was abruptly flooded with loads of people. There was never a transitional moment. Now it was an empty room, and the next moment you had already to make your way through a crowd to get to the right place. She liked to be among people and at the same time to feel separated from them. She watched people as if it was in a condescending manner and a little detached, but their emanations of fun and happiness affected her too.

Today, she had plenty to do, too much for Saturday. Some company was unhappy with its neighbors who, in opinion of claimed group, were too noisy. How did they manage to hear others, if their tables were almost on the dance floor? It remained a mystery to Rey. But she conscientiously resolved the issue, calming down heated young people. As usual, fights and warm babies and blond chasers, who tried to occupy the toilet stalls, came into the picture. Sakes alive, there was a motel across the road, can’t they really wait to? When she complained Unkar about it, he only laughed slyly, and noticed that Rey used to behave like an old matron.

Time imperceptibly approached by midnight, and she rushed between kitchen, technicians  
and guests in the hall. Winding round the club, Rey noticed familiar tall figure with smarting eyes. Places for VIP guests were located around the club perimeter,  
giving the opportunity to observe both the stage and the dance floor. And Rey would never raise her eyes to this zone if she hadn’t noticed junk spotlight once again. Kylo Ren made himself comfortable on the sofa in the private part of the hall on the first floor.

The professor was alone and twisted the stalk of a seemingly empty glass melancholy at that moment. She swallowed frantically and hastened to hide in the shadows of the overhanging balcony, to get her ideas into shape. Rey was completely unprepared for meeting him because she left undone her decision how to relate to this ... persecution? Harassment? Stupid joke? Damn it, she hadn’t known yet, how to call it. Suddenly, red-haired Erica Taub who was working today exactly on the first floor, flashed by. Rey rushed after her and grabbed her hand.

“Ah, Rey!” the friend smiled, and sent the order through the communicator to the kitchen. “Sorry, I'm swamped with work today.”

“Erica,” she stopped nevertheless the rapidly flying girl. “There is your client at table 12. Tall man, dark hair just below shoulders, looks like thirty - thirty-five years old.”

Taub thought for a second, remembering, and then her face lighted up. Any administrator learns by the time quickly and for long to remember faces in order to know how to behave with a client. And for the VIP lounge it was mandatory condition.

“Yes, there is one. Why?”

“How ... how long has he been here?”

“About two hours. His table is booked a week ahead...”

“What?!” Rey thought she misheard something.

“Ah, Unkar didn't tell you?” the red-haired girl even forgot about her urgent business, wanting to share a fresh gossip. Since Rey came to work only at the weekend, the most part of usual intra-club life passed her by. Meanwhile, Erica confidentially whispered in her ear the continuation of this stunning news.

“The man comes here for the second week at a stretch. Just didn’t appear last week-end, I think. The table is reserved a week ahead and always sits alone, knitting brows. He orders nothing but water, but leaves fancy tips. Strange gay. Unkar says not to mess with him, but no one would risk it. You’ll see what face he makes, as if he were playing poker for a million.”

It means, playing poker ...

“And he was here too, on Thursday?” - an accompanying thought came to mind.

“When your company and you hooted with laughter? Of course. Why?”

“Eh-mm, nothing... he looks familiar,” Rey muttered, digesting information she’d just heard. When she saw, that Erica was still giving too interested looks at her, noticed: “You’ve been in a hurry, it seems.”

“Oh hell, yes!”

She realized suddenly and almost ran to the side of the bar. Rey hid deeper in the shade so that not a single spotlight could reach to her, and thought. Ren used to come here for the second week in a row. He was here on Thursday, but didn’t join them. What does it mean? What the hell is going on? All these obscure notes, hints and almost persecution were more reminiscent of some kind primary school than adult male behavior. Or it was exactly what Ren expected? To create the impression of illogicality and stupidity. He could be anybody, but stupid Professor Ren was not. Insolent - yes, arrogant asshole – definitely, damn attractive man - no doubt. But all of it did not explain his behavior. And it meant it was necessary to find the reason as soon as possible and stop it before it became too late for one of them or both.

Even assuming, that he just wanted to get laid quickly with a pretty nightclub hostess at the very beginning, this idea had been already exhausted. Now everything was going into the area where it was easy to lose footing beneath the tread. Rey grinned sadly. If any girl were Rey, she would have responded to his provocations or peached on him to the police. She would have written up, given a testimony and forgotten such a nightmare. Yeah. Of course, the option was the simplest and the most useless. Rey didn’t have a single doubt that Kylo Ren could shrug off all charges and incriminations. It was foolish to try to stop a person possessing opportunities, status, money and social connections. It’d rather harm her more than him. And besides, it would be a dangerous undertaking to be involved in contacting the defense industry. These guys cover their people's asses much better than corrupt politicians. There would be nothing left, if she lifted a hand of law against their “Golden Treasure”.

So the situation was rather non-optimistic, but Rey remembered firmly that despondency was a sin. The right thing, perhaps, would be to keep distance to the bitter end. And not to show him with a single word or gesture that all of his subtitles, hints or actions hurt her somehow. Only cold politeness, emphasizing their status distinction. And then there would be a chance that the professor would have a bellyful of such obscure games. She wanted to believe in such outcome lap till buckle at the knees, because it distracted her from a dangerous thought: she was flattered by such attention of him.

Rey stole a glance at Ren’s table; he was still sitting there, thoughtfully staring at a glass of water. She would die hard to find out what this incomprehensible man was thinking.

“Rey?” the voice of Unkar Plutt went off right above the ear, made her almost to bounce. The old man noticed it and smiled repentantly. “Sorry, baby, I didn’t want to scare you.”

“It's all right,” she squeezed gently the hand of her named uncle. “What are you… Do you want something?”

“Yes,” Plutt somehow hesitated atypical of him and scratched his bushy blond eyebrow. His full puffy face expressed embarrassment and nervousness. “The first floor needs your help, Erica can't handle it. There are surprisingly many guests today, and because…”

“But you don’t want to ask me about it, right?” Rey crossed her arms over her chest and  
looked straight into Unkar's blue eyes. “Why?”

“He is here again,” answered the uncle, biting his lower lip and squinting blindly up, towards that little table. There was no need to explain who this “he” was, Rey understood it. “Smug son of a bitch is coming here for the second week in a row.”

“So, what’s it about?” she tried to screw her face up into an expression of moveless countenance. “The man is chilling. I do not understand what caused such your anxiety.”

“Baby,” Plutt hugged her by the shoulders, pulling her to him. “You may not believe me, but I have seen a lot of crap, and my intuition is just yelling at the top of my throat now.”

“And what are the biochemical reactions in your brain, that you call intuition, telling you?”

Unkar clicked his tongue annoyingly, listening to the irony in her voice.“You dismiss my words,” he seemed to be getting angry, because swear words appeared in his speech. “I'm pretty sure that this piece of shit comes after you, Rey, and troubles follow him. He is looking for you. But you don’t want to listen to the old Unkar, being surrounded by silly illusion of your safety. You’re young and naive. You were brought up in a Catholic shelter! Holy Virgin Mary, you don’t know anything about real life, spending time at your university!”

Rey smiled affectionately and hugged the elderly mafia man.

“Uncle,” she said into his ear, “maybe my experience is not as rich as yours. But believe me, I cannot stand in awe of my own professor. We see him three times a week at lectures. It is unlikely he misses so much one of his students to chase her in the nightclubs. It’s strange that you don’t remember we’d played poker with him on one of Thursdays.”

She spoke these words in a careless tone, but she felt burned with shame, because of outright lies to a man who practically replaced her father.

“I’m going upstairs to help Erica, and you should watch less stupid detective tv-shows,” she finished instructively, jokingly threatening him with a finger. “And don’t deny it, I can hear ‘Castle’ show from your office every night.”

With these words, she smacked Plutt, who was dumbfounded by such news, and turned away. Gritting her teeth and screwing up her face to the most neutral professional-friendly expression, Rey headed up the stairs. Step, another step... well, _hello Death on two legs_. Their eyes met almost immediately, they nodded to each other in greeting, and Rey was instantly distracted.

More or less, she was able to take a breath only two hours later, when her legs were already buzzing from tension, and the chest was unpleasantly aching due to the constant running up and down the stairs. Honestly, fatigue was felt fatal, but she had to be patient. Eight months and this crazy pace of life will come to the end. Rey sat tiredly on a high bar stool, straightening the hair which had got out of a hair-dress and pulling a hem of strict black uniform skirt.

“You might have lived on energy shots with such a schedule, Miss Teedo,” Ren came out of nowhere and sank down beside, stretching out his long legs. Oh, a step-ladder would seem like an ottoman for this tall lanky.

“I'm afraid, sir, in my case, the energy shots would have taken me to the grave even faster than job and study. Have you seen their ingredient lists?” Rey responded politely, straightening her back and belaboring her memory for a fad and a knave. How could she completely forget that he has been still here?

“When I was a student, it was the only way to live till the evening and not fall asleep standing. And although I can’t pretend to say what they are made of now, but a poison wasn’t mixed in there before”.

Rey stared at the professor perplexedly, trying to understand what kind of nonsense he was talking, and then she guessed. My, my! It seemed a small incident in the lobby of the campus remained her secret as a secret. Was it possible that neither the color of the vial, nor the name of the medicine _were_ even worthy of Ren's attention? However, the bubble was really too small for a great ham of his hands to read more about half-erased inscriptions on it. However, everything turned out, though unexpectedly, but definitely for the better. She didn’t want to hear any jokes or, even worse, deliberate pity from this a person at all.

“I still naively believe the FDA is on guard of our health and won’t allow mass death at Cambridge, professor,” she answered a little more frivolously than intended. Ren smiled somehow unexpectedly warmly, and Rey looked away immediately. To look at a person who has lost the whole raid of arrogance and snobbery for instance was dangerous. So, she tried to talk to fill in that gaping void and bring her thoughts to the right. But she wasn’t able to find a talking point, and in the end, Rey blurted out the first thing that came to mind: “You have a rather strange way to kill Saturday’s evening sir.”

“Why do you think so? I find it quite ordinary.” He shrugged indifferently and rested his elbows on the bar counter.

“You’re sitting alone in a nightclub and drink water...” she began, but Ren interrupted her in the same second.

“Do you really have something against water?” He was surprised feignedly, tragically throwing black eyebrows.

“Not at all. Jesus once said ... blah blah blah ... whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life*,” Rey read it outwith a giggle, looking at her shoes. She could quote scripture from any part and in any condition.

“Living forever is very tempting, but I'm afraid I’d get damn bored already the second hundred years,” the professor said mockingly.

“It's about the existence of heaven, and not about the mortal body,” she grimaced, rubbing aching legs, but straightened almost instantly. Ren's careful look rested on her gaunt ankles. Anger rose inside again, she wanted to hit this all-round jerk, who was looking openly at his own student. But the moment passed, and the arguments of reason took the reins again. _Tact, politeness and distance_ are the cornerstones of their communication.

“Then it would be even more painful pastime than it’d seemed to me before,” the professor looked up finally and looked into her eyes. That's something at least.

“Well, yes, it’s unlikely that sex, drugs, and rock and roll would exist there,” Rey said angrily. Close attention to her as a woman began to annoy. The situation was wrong. They were too unequal in social status to allow such behavior. That couldn’t please.

“So, no entertainment?” he sighed mockingly, sadly. “I’d rather go to hell then, maybe the guys are more fun there.”

“I doubt that, their program is also monotonous: crying and Ape's Paternoster.”

“Then, if I don’t like it either in heaven or underground in any case, I will continue the life that suits me. I will remain an atheist and I will catch luck here,” Ren shrugged, but his eyes shone with the fire of excitement. He liked to tease her. _Tact, courtesy and distance_...

“The presence or absence of faith does not mean that you need to waste your life for some dubious pleasures. It's pure slow suicide,” Rey was pleased with her answer. But that would be the end of their conversation, as she hoped, but ...

“If you say now that suicide is a sin, I’ll be disappointed at you, Miss Teedo.”

“But I did not intend to earn your approval, Professor, and I won’t talk about sinfulness. If only because it's not for me to judge you ...”

“But you do,” he interrupted, peering attentively at Rey's face, as if seen for the first time.

“Each of us has the right to our own opinion, based on personal principles, sir,” she answered vaguely, looking around the half-empty hall. _Tact, politeness and distance_... Another half an hour and she can go home, stretch the buzzing, like a high-voltage tower, legs, and if there is enough strength after, then take a bath. Her dreams were interrupted by the voice of Ren.

“Subjectivity is bad in things that you can easily make mistakes in your observations.”

“Of course, because the opinion of one person cannot be objectively a priority,” she grimaced. Verbal balancing was not her advantage.

“I like your categoricalness, but now I'm sure you are mistaken,” he leaned his back on the bar smugly, looking around the room. Rey looked at her professor with interest. “Have you ever watched anyone?”

“You go to a nightclub to... watch?” it seemed, the irony in her voice was too much, but the teacher did not pay attention to it. Or he considered the conversation at half past two in the night was a sufficient reason to overcome temporarily the social staircase flight that separated them.

“Does it surprise you?” He glanced sideways at her, and then stared intently again into the hall.

“Well...” she thought for a moment. “It seemed to me you have every opportunity to observe students at the lectures.”

“Of course,” Ren nodded, agreeing. “But it’s much more interesting to analyze the same people in an unusual environment.”

Rey froze, waiting for the continuation, but he did not follow. Then she carefully noticed:

“Why are you doing this?”

“I'm trying to understand the course of human thoughts, the evolution of intelligence. Or its degradation. In various ways” he didn’t take his eyes off something he only knew.

Rey got the opportunity to review his profile. Well, there was something to admire. Nature and genetics, in his case, presented truly amazing picture, gathered from not the most beautiful in separate way features. You could mint coins of Roman Empire with a contour of Kylo Ren in a laurel wreath and years of reign now, if you like, no one would notice any substitution.

“And how is the progress going?” She asked, forcibly tearing a look from his teacher for the umpteenth time. Seriously, was he smeared with superglue? _Tact, politeness and distance_...

“See this couple?” Ren began instead of an answer.

Rey nodded, turning her head and looking at a guy and a girl, quite colorful representatives of Boston club culture. The red-haired girl was wearing short denim shorts, despite the cold nights of October, and a t-shirt of acid colors. Her companion flaunted in leather pants, a jacket and a T-shirt with the emblem of ‘Dimmu Borgir’. They were quite ridiculous combination that Rey was surprised how she hadn’t paid attention to them earlier.

Meanwhile, her interlocutor continued:

“I bet you haven’t noticed them until the moment I said. Right?”

“Yes,” she nodded, looking at the professor with interest. “And this is strange.” Even apart from the fact that they attract attention on their own, I usually remember faces quite well.

“You don’t know how to observe,” Ren smiled faintly with corners of mouth, “this couple came here ten minutes ago. They did not even know each other before. They met on the dance floor below, poured a couple of "Barons" and headed to toilet nearby to fasten acquaintance with furious intercourse on a toilet tank.

“I'm even afraid to ask how you got this,” Rey laughed slightly in surprise. “Unless you sat to the next booth, of course.

She said and stopped abruptly, because this behavior was too familiar, but the professor let her tone pass by, glancing at her gaily. _Tact, courtesy and distance_…

“I just look and see,” he waved his hand toward the guy. “If they were acquainted, then microcontacts that a meeting couple usually has would appear between them: gestures, glances, touches. They are sitting and stupidly joking, trying to hide the awkwardness of a specific first meeting. The girl is looking constantly at the phone screen, obviously checking what time it is and planning how to get away from her partner as soon as possible.”

“It seems that I have to open my own online blog, and you should put on a stupid hat.” She laughed, but she had no fun. No matter, how often Rey peered at, she wasn’t able to notice something deeper than the usual conversation of two people.

“You mistakenly think that comparing with Sherlock would flatter me. I have to upset you - I do not consider the drug addicted person and real idler to be a worthy example for imitation”. The phrase was unexpected and rather angry, that’s why Rey felt embarrassed and preferred to ignore such attack, without having idea how to react to it.

“Well, let's assume everything happened between them as you said. But how can you prove sex between them? In the end of the end, as an administrator I would definitely know about it at least as the hostess, and the security makes reports...”

“If someone noticed this couple you’ll be told for sure, but these guys are quick dating professionals. How do I prove it? She has a hickey on her left breast and there will be a bruise on right knee soon. Apparently, the ‘Takodana’ toilets were not designed for the convenience of having sex in there. He’s still unbuttoned his fly and there are sperm prints on the pants.”

“Ugh, yucky!..”

“It is difficult to cope with physiology, but I agree, it can be done more careful.”

“So, you are more concerned about the fact that the guy is dirty messy Marvin, but not the fact he likes fast sex without obligations?

“Is it a problem for you?” He looked at her ironically, and Rey realized that she came across a carefully planned provocation. Again. Perhaps, professor came up everything about a strange couple, however, now it’s receded into the background instantly.

_Tact, courtesy and distance_... She pursed her lips and answered.

“People are free to do whatever they want. It is their life.”

“You said the opposite thing a few minutes ago,” Ren smiled arrogantly. “In which one did you lie?”

“It was not a lie, I expressed only my attitude to this pastime. As for me, I really consider such behavior unacceptable. Moreover, to a greater extent on the women of, not men’s.”

“Are you so demanding on your gender?”

“Historically, the role of women is to satisfy the needs of civilization. However, we are to blame by ourselves for allowing this to happen.”

“Wow,” the man turned fully toward her now, looking at Rey from head to toe with interest. “Do you belong to a feminist movement?”

“It passed me by,” she raised her hands up, disowning such statements. “I just consider it’s unworthy that a woman uses her genital features to achieve specific goals. There must be at least a sense of pride, well... the forbidden fruit is the sweetest.”

“Your youth and lack of any experience speaks to you,” Ren began, lazily stretching the words. “But I dare to assure you that there are no inaccessible women, only men who do not have enough power, money and character.”

“Aren't you implying that every woman can be bought? You know it sounds quite offensive.”

“It's true. What is the point of being offended by the truth?”

“I am not offended, I just said that it sounds quite offensive. If your words hit hard for real, it would mean I voluntarily ranked myself precisely to those persons who are bought.”

“So you don't consider yourself to be female, Miss Teedo? Because I'm not the person who makes exceptions for anyone” black eyebrows soared up in mock surprise. He continued to provoke her, and it looked like he has achieved his goal. _Tact, courtesy and distance_... To hell!

“Then you have pretty one-sided and limited ideas about women, sir. It seems you are attracting just such people, since you made a similar conclusion,” she blurted out.

“Really? Any woman seeks to attract the attention of a man. AND it looks rather disgusting, because every of them knows exactly what she wants to get,” Ren snapped tightly. “Will you try to dissuade me of this statement?”

“Nothing of the sort!” Rey laughed outright, rejoicing in her soul. Professor was getting angry, and it played into the hands of hers. “I'm not the kind of person who has to and wants to do it.”

“Why?”

“You might not have liked my methods,” they looked into each other's eyes.

“I promise, I’ll survive after the immersion into the world of your plush idealistic fantasies,” Ren replied with sham fear, and she wanted again to punch him in the face, cause of his mansplaining attitude.

“And you are a joker, professor, but I had something different in mean. In my opinion, the situation is reverse. A _man _will go through all nine circles of Hell on shattered glass and barefoot to gain favor in sight of the woman he craves for. And she won’t even crook a finger, trying to lure her hero, and this exactly will be his independent decision.”

“But that would be some sort of a bribe option, wouldn’t it? If not by money, then by actions. Just the same thing over again, isn’t it?”

“No, you're wrong. Such willingness to make sacrifices is not a redeeming feature at all. She either turns him off once and for all, or she makes the most devoted creature of him. When a woman becomes a choice of a strong partner, she herself becomes stronger. And there can be no bidding in regards to personalities equal in strength.”

“So, you consider I’m weak. Am I right?”

_No, but she would never admit it._

“I told you that you might have dislike my methods,” she lowered her eyes modestly.

“Let's say. You consider equality is possible. Why?”

“Oh, we are turning to the dangerous and controversial side of the topic. People have been fighting for centuries over this issue, being in a permanent inter-gender conflict, and now you want to solve everything in a half-dark night club within a half an hour. And therefore, I’m going to ask you a counter-question, sir. So, what is your vision?”

“Hmm, it is obvious that I sincerely consider the weaker sex is dependent on men. All the women that I met, were good only as a beautiful companion and for working with papers. Your friend Phasma is the case in point: she will never become something more than a smart helper.”

He leaned his elbows on his knees, leaning in her direction. Obviously, he liked the whole discussion, despite frankly maximalist slogans voiced on both sides. Perhaps her words were offensive, but he asked himself for it and listened to them with a calm face. But Rey seemed to have lost the battle with her own temperament.

“Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper would be very indignant now. However, I'm glad that you deny no longer the narrow circle of your experience. Rumor has it that we are addicted not from men, but solely from your naive vanity”

Damn it, she proves in blood and sweat every single day that she is worthy to study at MIT, and she won’t allow any narcissistic fool humiliate her.

“Now it’s my turn to feel offended,” Rey perhaps thought she had a dream, or rage flickered like a flash in his gaze.

“What for? You weren’t offended by my assumption of weakness, but you were hurt by the fact that all men are conceited?”

“Not really, you’ve just blamed only us. Women get cocky, like peacocks, when men give interested to look at them. And we, of course, try to support them in this situation. Doesn't the vanity work in such a case on both sides of the barricades? Or you, with your veiled formulations, just attribute this vice to me only?"

“Oh, you are a Pandora’s box by yourself,” she grimaced annoyingly. She did not like the conversation at all. It was a shitty topic for discussion early in the morning after night shift.

“I consider it as a compliment.” This annoying person suddenly smiled broadly, and Rey wanted to curse.

“Not a chance! I won’t score it for your achievement. You believe women are addicted and good for nothing, not able to do something by their own. Stupid statement. You are well aware that we can do almost everything, the same as men. And alas! Your attempt to hurt me failed. But there is one thing that you, professor, would never say a word about. Unfortunately, unlike dildos, the strong shoulder, which we really need, haven’t been invented yet,” Rey tiredly closed her eyes and rubbed them with palms. Fatigue crushed so hard that it seemed like a chair would crack under it. She wanted to fall asleep unbearably, but it was only a little bit left until the end of the shift there, as before end of this ridiculous conversation. She came to conclusion that she had to wave good-bye to desired bath today, such a pity. This idiotic conversation tired her, but Rey decided to finish it. “Stupid to deny that we have different brains, spatial thinking, and the like. But all this doesn’t mean that someone is worse or better. We are just different. And it’s not women-like to assert ourselves through be, rather on the contrary. Whereas almost every male person is sure for some reason - a woman is hell-bent on having sex, and maybe on getting married to anyone she was hooking up for more than three weeks or to anyone who will make a marriage proposal to her.”

“It follows therefrom that: no one needs relationship”.

“Come on! where does such black-and-white mentality come from?” She even flanged up her hands, making merry with.

“A truly strong relationship serves the status of a man in the eyes of the public much more than a list of his love affairs. After all, the latter one comprises, it’s as good as having a slave. You couldn’t be able to communicate with a person on an equal basis, you just would fall down. To be equal, and at the same time not to get lost in your partner is the art, much subtler.”

“However, not every man is committed to it.”

“Is it me, or are you dismissing the criticism now?” Rey smiled. “In the beginning you asked my opinion, and I’ve expressed it, but throughout our conversation you are always referring my judgements and estimates to yourself. I'm not an expert on psychoanalysis, but it seems to me, your self-esteem is much lower than you could imagine.”

His eyes flashed with undisguised anger now, but she only nodded coldly, getting up from the bar stool.

“Sorry, professor, we're closing.”

Rey waved to Unkar, who was backing her to bring her conversations to a close and return to work. After that, without turning around and saying goodbye, she went down the stairs. Her words trenched on blatant rudeness and blazing indiscretion, but she couldn’t help it. He asked about her opinion - she answered. It’s foolish to be offended by directness of speech that he provoked himself. _Tact, courtesy and distance.._. It was her total failure. Rey sighed and went into the club routine, trying to get off the nasty aftertaste of the conversation with the professor.

The dark, unlit by lanterns parking place at the back door of the club was empty. Rey was the last person who left the club, closing it and arming a security system. Dawn rose greyly on the horizon and it was frigging cold outside. Chattering her teeth with cold, she was being on the hunt for a phone with fingers, getting instantly icy in the autumn wind, when a car stopped next to her, almost blending into the surrounding darkness. The dim light of its headlights lit some boxes. A mere glance was enough to take a deep breath. The door of the matte long-nosed-like Mercedes climbed up revealing Kylo Ren to her who she was looking at in the reddish reflections from the dashboard. A strong sensation of deja vu settled in the head.

“You're late, Miss Teedo.”

“I can tell the same to you, professor. The club closed an hour ago, and you are still here.”

“I’ve been waiting for you,” - transparent answer made her ears tingle, forcing her body to strain up immediately. “I couldn’t break with the tradition and offer to drive you home.”

Rey smiled involuntarily, it was expected and still useless.

“Thank you, professor, but I have to answer, as I did last time - I have called a cab”.

She began to fumble in her bag again, trying to find the uncatchable means of communication. It seemed to her everything had been already said, but Ren, thought in different way, obviously.

“Do you always come back so late?”

“It depends. But I think it ought to be none of your concern”, Rey caught finally the slippery aluminum case, pulling it out and opening attachment. Finding out, where the bloody hell her taxi driver was, seemed to be the most important thing for her.

“Why not? You are my student ...”

“That's why, professor,” she snapped, looking at him firmly in the eye. The noise of the engine rang out and a yellow taxi turned into the parking lot.

Without a word, she opened the door and got into the car. While leaving parking place, Rey noticed that Ren’s black monster was riding right behind them. For a little while she was able to calm down with a thought there were no other gateways anyway. But the farther they moved along the lantern-lit streets of Boston, the more obvious it became that he was clearly following her. She looked anxiously into a car rear viewer, seeing it and thoughtful Kylo Ren in the reddish electric light there now and then. Finally, a taxi braked in close propinquity to the house, where she and Finn rented an apartment. Having paid quickly ride, Rey carefully stepped out into the wet the street, recently cleaned by a sweeper. Ren stopped ten paces away from the taxi, but made no attempt to get out the car or talk to her. Quickly whisking into the porch, she tried as soon as possible to be surrounded by home grounds. Then in the apartment without turning the lights, Rey sneaked to the kitchen window and peered carefully from behind the curtain. Taxi, of course, left a long time ago, but the professor was still standing outside, making no attempts to follow his student. She breathed a sigh of relief.

“What are you doing here in the dark?” A sleepy voice rang out, and Rey nearly yelled from fright. The switch clicked and a warm light flooded the room. Sleepy Finn was standing in the doorway, squinting at the brightness of the lamp.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” she squeaked half-strangled. “I thought you were still with Arnold. You scared me to death.”

“He's with family today,” muttered a friend, shuffling back into his room

“I see,” Rey turned back to the window and just in time. She managed to hear as a motor roared outside the window, and the professor’s car jumped off, as if he were waiting for the light to be switched on. But this could not be true, he didn’t have any idea which the window was the right, did he?

* * *

* John 4:13-14


	7. Chapter 7

On Sunday, the professor took a sit again at his beloved table and meditated over a glass of water. Rey watched him from afar, nipping water from her glass. Today he made no attempt to fall into conversation with her, and she didn’t give a handle for it, trying to keep out of his sight. It was already enough for Rey that her room was saturated by a strange mixture of roses and Ren's perfume, that contrived somehow to engrain all her clothes pieces in mysterious way. Besides, she still hadn’t thanked him for the flowers, and she had no knowledge if she needed to do it at all. Irritation splashed in her blood, even though 24 hours had passed. Rey had no idea how to react to their last conversation. Ren is not a Hux, who you can easily argue with and chat about anything. The situation, to put it mildly, was embarrassing. She reproached herself for having risen to the bait by primitive verbal manipulations and entered into a insignificant discussion. What had she thought about that moment?

Yesterday's conversation left behind more questions than answers, and Rey had no idea how such indiscretion would backfire on her. She was too harsh, irate by fatigue and overt, appraising looks. And then there was Ren's strange behavior after the club was closed ... He’d seemed to walk her home in a peculiar way, made sure that everything had been fine with her, and disappeared into the night after it. She snorted softly aloud in response to her thoughts. Her life resembled more and more a plot of a boulevard story, but not a boring reality. However, there was no other explanation, because the professor did not look like a maniac. Tiredly rubbing her temples, filled with pain from the approaching migraine, Rey realized that she was completely entangled in personality of Kylo Ren. She wouldn’t have had enough of all the knowledge of the world to understand his motives, actions and her attitude to him. How is it even possible to have a total contempt for somebody and admire somebody at the same time? Nonsense. Nevertheless, why nonsense? All she knew at the moment about this man was a list of absolutely incongruous facts. A geek, living in a computer club, and then pulled out over the barrel by the current President Snoke. The genius of artificial intelligence, who the Department of Defense itself is walking in single file for and eating out of Ren’s hands and allowing him to create as much as one's heart desires – the sky’s the limit, - without any burdening with work for the Pentagon. All this combined with teaching in some incredible way.

What for? It is unlikely that he’d set up this field cause of duty, honor and conscience. Ha, it was as well to remember about the unbearable scientific snobbery that contradicted the willingness to promote his protégés. And the top of this jumble of principles, traits of character and brilliant mind was the image of a smart alec with a bouquet of terrible roses. She would be definitely going mad before she could have understood Professor Ren!

If she continues to think about this man, then she wouldn’t be able to get rid only of two Tylenol tablets. Rey sighed. Yesterday's fatigue didn’t go away, and the stupid heart took all the grains of swift-passing recreation that landed today during the shift. She straightened her shoulders, loosening stiff muscles of her aching lower back cause of constant keeping it upright. She was as tired as could be. She really wanted to leave the club early in order to try to get enough sleep before lectures. Perhaps it was worth to talk about it with Unkar.

Somewhere closer to midnight, her phone vibrated in her uniform skirt pocket. Glancing at the screen, Rey was surprised to see the name flashed. She went into the service hall, where the music from the dance floor was hardly heard, and answered the call.

“Arnold?” she couldn’t hide the surprise in her voice.

“Hey, Rey!” the cheerful loud voice of Finn's boyfriend cut painfully on the eardrum.

“Something happened?”

Anxiety bundled her up from head to toe. Her friend had recently gotten in touch with his new boyfriend, so Rey and Arnold weren't that close. At least to call each other in the middle of the night.

“Everything is cool. I'm on my way to you, and Finn asked me to give you a lift home. It seems I’m going somewhere in the same direction. What time do you get off at?”

The warmth from the care of her personal guardian angel spread somewhere in her chest. Her dearest Finn.

“Ehm, hold on, just a second.”

Rey took the phone from her ear and reached Unkar's office in three steps. She knocked quickly and she went inside, without waiting for an answer. It was hard to hide how her uncle rushed convulsively to switch channels of a huge flat-panel TV, hanging on the wall.

“There is not a big load of people today, can I leave after midnight? Rose will close the club,” she asked without preamble, her hand over the microphone of the phone.

“No problem,” Plutt waved his hand. “Tired?”

“A little, and I’m about to sleep before the lectures”, Rey shrugged, watching the flashing TV screen.

Unkar said nothing, finally finding a channel broadcasting round-the-clock news bulletins. Noticing that she was still standing in his office, he just nodded assent. Rey went out into the hallway and closed the door behind her.

“Arnold?”- She asked, bringing the phone to her ear. “Half past twelve is convenient time for you?”

“Of course,” - said an incredibly cheerful voice on the other side of the electromagnetic waves. – “Where to?”

“Thirty-two Temple Street. ‘Takodana Club’. Drive up to the back door.”

“Agreed.”

With these words, Arnold cut off, and she headed back to the hall to let Rose know.

The last half hour of work had gone by in unexpected turmoil, so Rey walked out to the backyard parking lot, ten minutes later than expected. She noticed Arnold right away, he was standing next to his car and smoking. His long blond hair, pulled into a ponytail, loomed like an infernal spot in the dim light of lanterns. Rey was already stepping out briskly in his direction when she descried the second figure, lost in the shadows a little further away. The professor was about to go toward her, but froze, noticing where she was heading. The sound of her heels echoed over the parking place.

“Hi,” she waved to Arnold, who heard footsteps and turned around. “Sorry for delay.”

“No problem. At least I smoked quietly, otherwise Finn would start whining again,” the guy rolled his eyes and Rey laughed. Her friend could be a royal pain in the backside when health was at issue. Who better than her know about it. “Let’s go.”

Without looking around and studiously avoiding Ren's tall figure, she got into the car. The bright blue Scion rolled out of the dim parking lot quickly, fading into the night traffic of Boston. The city coruscated with twinkling headlights and neon signs. The city center, where the action was at day light, was throbbing and bubbling up even at night, full of students and other youths, relaxing in clubs or just having fun in the streets. Sometimes there were short drag races between two traffic lights, and then the most important thing was not to get caught by the police. Guardians of law and order took everyone indiscriminately, preferring to find out who was to blame, at the police station already, where they completed reports ad nauseam. Rey had hit twice so badly, and both times she was released only in the morning.

Meanwhile, they were already rushing along the Boston Tunnel. Moreover, much faster than expected. But Rey wasn’t worried, she enjoyed the speed, passing by the lights of oncoming cars, and she just wanted to be home as quickly as possible. They came up onto the South-East bridge deck near China Town, where Arnold floored the accelerator. The engine revved, and the car dashed forward even faster. The feeling of speed was delightful, but a deafening rumble of eight cylinders appeared unexpectedly from behind, as they flew away the bridge along the Albany Street. The black Mercedes, like a shadow, swept along the next lane to the left and changed the lane directly in front of them, forcing Arnold to slow down frantically.

“What the bastard?” He exclaimed in righteous indignation. Rey was silent, her heart racing at the sight of the familiar car. What the hell was going on? Meanwhile, Arnold blinked with a distant light at the insolent pruner, who crawled lazily into the right lane, slowing down and letting them go ahead. Ren's face floated out of the corner of Rey’s eyes: he was staring straight at the road with concentration and without any distraction.

“Dickhead,” the annoyed Arnold continued to grumble, and Rey felt her body press into the seat again. The light Scion quickly revved into gear, leaving the city center behind and entering a smooth turn. But as soon as they exceeded the established speed limit again, a black matte bottom appeared in front of them, forcing them to slow down and annoying with the red light of the parking lights. Such leapfrog continued a couple more times, until they finally turned onto Columbia Road, trudging from traffic light to traffic light. The professor followed right behind them.

“I get the feeling...” Arnold threw another glance in the rearview mirror, assessing their involuntary companion.

"You’ve got it," Rey finally spoke up, rubbing her eyes wearily. She was sick and tired with over it all! “He’s shadowing me.”

“Holy cow!” the guy stared at her in surprise. “You could have let me know. What is actually happening?”

“You won’t believe me, but I’d rather understand it too.”

Arnold was silent for a moment before speaking again.

“I don’t know what you’re doing in your club, but this,” he nodded toward the reflection of Mercedes in the mirror, “is very similar to the whim of a rich bastard. Have you got any problems?”

"I wouldn't say so," Rey drawled.

“But it looks like that”.

“It's not all that simple as it seems. He won't hurt me,” they both looked in the view mirror at the same time, “But please don't tell anything to Finn.”

“Oh, please, these are not my secrets, and I'm not going to chat about them right and left.”

He parked neatly in front of their house, watching a black Mercedes stand still a little further off. The steady hum of his engine reached them even through the soundproofing cabin.

“Going up?” Rey grabbed her bag from the back seat and felt the vibration of the phone.

“No, just tell this slow-poke to hurry. Otherwise I'll get old here while he’s powdering his nose.”

She giggled and was about to open the door when Arnold spoke again.

“Rey, we don't know each other that well ... But you're Finn's friend,” he chewed his thin lower lip thoughtfully. “If you have any problems, just contact me without any hesitation.”

His eyes seemed unusually dark in the dim interior. Arnold furrowed his blond eyebrows as he looked at her with concern. She smiled softly.

“Thank you, but I'm sure I'm not in danger. But still. Thank you so much.”

She got out of the car in the cold gusts of wind blowing from the side of the railroad tracks. In two jumps, she reached the entrance and was relieved from the draft chilling to the bone. The phone vibrated three times again, announcing that a message was waiting for her. Rey climbed the steps slowly, holding on to the wobbly railing with one hand and reaching for her phone with the other. A message of predictable authorship waited on the screen:

_"Tell this sucker that he would drive in such dangerous way without passengers and in the other realm."_

Quiet laughter echoed down the empty corridor. Damn it, it was almost cute! Clattering keys, Rey stumbled into the apartment, tripping over Finn's sneakers.

“Oh, not again! How is it even possible to throw shoes everywhere!” She grumbled, throwing off her shoes next to.

“Oh, it's you?” the black head stuck out of the bathroom. “Why didn't you write a message that you were on your way?”

“I did it without intention,” Rey shrugged, taking off her cloak and unwinding her scarf. “Arnold is waiting for you downstairs and asked to tell you that he didn’t want to die while waiting for his Dark Prince.”

“You've got to be kidding!” Finn grumbled and disappeared back through the door.

Spanking barefoot into the kitchen, she grabbed a fatty Gingerbread Cookie. A friend had a passion for these sweet Danish pastries and stuffed cans all over the cupboards as a strategic stash for a rainy day.

“Are you going to have fun all night long again?”

“Yes, Mommy,” a cheerful voice came out.

“You would have really done it that you would be expelled for systematic absenteeism,” Rey has raised this talk more than once, but so far all her grumbles have disappeared in vain.

“No way,” Finn finally left his hideout and put his hand into the box, grabbing a handful of cookies at once and stuffing it all into his mouth. Rey winced. “I will graduate the college before they could count at least half of my passes. What's with the flowers, by the way?”

“Arrogant turkey-cock,” she muttered and yawned softly, ignoring his question.

“You’ll give a kiss of death to yourself with this work.”

It seemed his time has come to lecture her. She smiled wearily.

“I hope no. Otherwise it would be damn a shame not get a defense of a thesis of my own.”

“Nerdy-girl,” Finn rolled his eyes.

“Go already, otherwise Arnold would really grow old and die waiting for you.”

Finn gave her a kiss on the cheek, staining her with cookie crumbs, and headed for the hallway.

“Food is in the fridge, pills are on the table, and I’m leaving”, he put on his age-old worn-out sneakers, threw on a leather jacket and waved his hand goodbye.

“Get out already,” she sighed wearily as the front door slammed shut behind him. “Who else of us is mommy...”

Rey made her way to the bathroom, stripping off her clothes as she walked into and throwing them into the laundry basket with some vengeful delight. She closed the door and stared into the huge mirror hanging on the other side. A habitual sigh escaped her chest, as soon as she glanced at herself. The sight was definitely sad. Dark circles under the eyes ceased to yield to pressure of the great power of the corrective concealer, they stood out as black holes on the cyanotic skin, with translucent streaks of blue veins. Thin arms, thin legs, protruding ribs. No matter how hard Finn tried, his culinary labors couldn’t leave an ounce of fat on Rey’s skinny body. And the rest wasn’t even worth to talk about, she was pale by comparison to anybody. Her skin seemed even more grey against the background of the blue tiles. Well, it would be stupid to think that the professor could have eyes on … this. In the darkness of the first meeting, it was still possible to blame an optical illusion, but in the light of day, the whole nightmare manifested itself in full. Marticia Adams would have envied her dead freshness perhaps.

Looking wearily in her own eyes, Rey turned away. The operation was indispensable to life, but she saw no chance for herself. Even if she could forget about the daylight-robbery-bill that any clinic would give to her, and the panic fear of cardiac arrest, then how could she live on? It would take about a year for a rehabilitation, according to Dr. Fifer. What would she do all this time? What would she live on? Would she be able to resume her study later, to a cage with predators, where every man was for himself? Would it be possible, as before, to break her back, trying to be in time here, there, and everywhere? There are no half-measures at Massachusetts, and Rey raised the bar of her goals too high to give up on the home stretch. No, there was no point in taking such risks. So, all that remained was to keep fingers crossed and endure difficulties at any cost until the end of the academic year. Rey hoped it would get better later. Sighing again, she climbed under the hot streams of water, imagining how it’s washing away all worries, fatigue and bad thoughts from her. She would endure any troubles and cope with disasters, despite the damn drug addict mother, hellish study schedule and an asshole professor.

‘The BeeGees’ cheerfully sounded like a broken record circling five times already, trying to reach her sleeping mind and announcing that a new day had come. The week went on as usual, measuring the time with lectures, seminars and research work. Rey disappeared into the lab every day, trying to make her program work as intended. However, data mining and data collecting hadn’t been launched by now, making her call every name in the book that an orphan of a Catholic school knew. Professor Hux flew safely to the conference on Wednesday, leaving his students in the care of Phasma. It wasn’t known who would act as a tutor instead of him. Rey had an intention to run into their laboratory today to find out the details first-hand.

The bad weather finally gave way to the last warm days. October confidently came into its own, painting the maples in Boston Common in all shades of yellow and burgundy. Their leaves covered the paths of Cambridge with a colored patchwork quilt, driven by the wind from the Charles River. This Thursday, on one of those warm autumnal days, her course spontaneously gathered at Kilian Court. Unfortunately, a sense of community for all the years between them did not appear, so such gatherings were quite rare. So they sprawled in front of the Great Dome, enjoying the view of Memorial Drive and the river. Another Decentralized Applications workshop had come to the end, and they urgently needed to refresh themselves in the out-of-doors. Rey joined the others, planning to visit Phasma and question her later.

Someone was sitting with his back resting on a bulky backpack, someone was lying, using jackets rolled into a ball as a pillow. Nearby, other students were resting in the same positions, basking in the surprisingly warm rays of the autumn sun. To Rey's left, who was stretching out on her own cloak, Justin Troy, a tall, black-haired geek with an obvious Indian blood, took his place. He uncovered his guitar and began checking the tuning. This guy used to play in three or even four bands at the same time. Rey even went to his shows couple of times, always amazed at how gloomy, hairy, and meticulously each band member was dressed in all black. So, Troy always had the instrument of torture with him, as well as a small Marshall combo powered by batteries. Few people knew, Justin's instrument was made by himself from several broken guitars a long time ago. The guy unearthed them, rummaging in a junkyard behind one of the underground music clubs. He had been pouring over it for about a month, re-soldering the circuits before the result arranged this fussy boy. Rey believed that the past of his idol - Brian May - haunted the young man. He sincerely strove to resemble the legendary guitarist in everything. She even saw Justin once with curled hair. The sight was so funny that he no longer renewed this look. And he didn’t study astrophysics solely because of his own unreal laziness. Possessing bright brains, quick thinking, resourcefulness and the ability to think outside the box, Justin was just an enchanting loafer. Even Finn recognized him as an authority in this regard. Troy was almost expelled from the course in due time, it’d made him transfer to the Faculty of Electronic Engineering in the end. However, all the lyrics were still full of longing for black holes and young universes, and one of the ballads was dedicated to Hawking himself. It was rumored that he sent the recorded copy to his second idol and even received gratitude in return. And although there had been only rumors around, Rey could believe well in their reality.

And now he was mumbling something quietly, connecting his guitar to the amp. She wasn’t listening until, unexpectedly for herself, she caught a familiar motive.

“Holy string theory, Justin! Can’t you play anything but your death metal?” Rey exclaimed, pretty amused by the pop music of the melody.

“Come on! Sing it, Teedo,” he said instead of answering. “And do not pretend that you don’t know the text.”

“No, no, no way” she muttered, leaning back onto her bag. But Justin was persistent with his silly song, which was popular a few years ago. He played the simplest beat on his laptop, continuing to play the main beat, and Rey did not notice how she gave up.

She smiled, humming about the life of an asshole. A girlfriend turned him to the police while their friends were getting high in the bathroom. The chorus was about the fact that that night they were young and just had to fan the spark, they sang together with Catherine. A couple more lines, and the others joined them, giggling silly and beating out the rhythm on something they had at hand. Lee was banging on the lid of his laptop, Mel was shaking a pencil case with pens like maracas. The others tapped their feet and clapped hands as they were yelling with all their lung power that they would shine brighter than the sun tonight. Gradually, unfamiliar students, sitting next to them, pulled themselves up to their group. Someone just tapped their feet, someone sang along with them. The teachers who happened to be nearby smiled openly at this ridiculous song about a stupid, but such a cheerful youth.

And with the loud shouting of the last chorus, Rey heard the discordant melody right in her ear. It took a couple of moments to understand and realize what was happening. And then, with a stiff hand, she took the telephone from the inner pocket of the bag, on which her head was laying. The phone melody screamed about ‘Death on two legs’. Rey stared blankly at the flashing screen until the call ended, and three missed calls at intervals of five minutes burst upon the eye. The phone blinked and a new incoming signal was accompanied by Freddie's poisonous voice immediately. She did not notice how the voices around her died away, continuing, like an idiot, lying with a screaming apparatus in her hands and wondering what Professor Ren might need in the middle of the day.

"So, ‘Death on Two Legs’, Miss Teedo," a cold voice came over her head, overlapping the evil motive. Rey jumped abruptly, sitting up and turning around.

Kylo Ren himself stood behind her. The ridiculous thought came to her mind that if she died this day, it would be definitely accompanied by music. Rey looked up at him, frantically trying to figure out if she had to get up or if she could continue to sit. Her own legs did not obey her, and therefore she remained still on the ground, fidgeting nervously, as if there were a herd of hedgehogs instead of grass. Rey could not stand such situations and therefore could not stand the moment, looking down and biting her lip. What an utter disgrace! Now she had no choice but to look at the polished the toe of Ren’s shoe without risking to look the teacher in the eye. In the meantime, the call was on, Queen sang, but she still could not bring herself to get it up, with some fatalism waiting for something inevitable. Rey was a frankly coward. But the professor was silent. Rey kept silent too, just having no idea what to say in this terrible situation. Only Mercury screamed loudly and hysterically once again in a circle how Death could kiss his ass goodbye. Feeling a wild blush covered her cheeks, Rey wondered why Ren didn’t drop the damn call. Why did he continue to listen to such openly offensive text? The opportunity to do the same and interrupt this torture on her own escaped somehow from her completely frightened consciousness. There were no coherent thoughts left in her head at all. None of them. And... oh, God, the professor, of course, perfectly understood the implications of this stupid childish bravado. Lord, even an imbecile would have figured it out!

But now, the time of the call that seemed to be like a small infinity ran out, and the melody was cut off. The feeling of shame has grown to the size of the Empire State Building. The professor moveв slightly, tucking the phone into his pants pocket, and Rey looked up fearfully. Ren's face was petrified, and his gaze could have hammered in nails, but instead he was looking at her. There was such a storm in his dark brown eyes that it was time to cover the head with hands. But Rey just lifted her chin, feeling cold sweat forming on her temples from the excitement. And then Ren opened his mouth, burning every word into her sore brain.

“Friday. 4 p.m. Your tutorial, Miss Teedo. And next time just be so kind to answer the call so that I won’t have to look for you in all the hot spots of Boston.”

With these words, he turned around and headed somewhere in the direction of the Maclaurin Campus.

Shit. God, what a pretty mess had she got into again? Rey blinked frequently, fighting back with tears and gasping for air. She suddenly started to sweat cause of the experienced stress. How stupid it all _did_ turn out, how ugly. She looked around, either in search of support, or simply trying to understand that the whole situation, happened here, wasn’t her dream. Classmates pretended successfully that they weren’t here, obviously keeping out of mischief and not trying to make it out.

“Don’t you write your paper for Hux,” Ted said finally, looking at her in surprise.

“And I’m still doing it,” she nodded automatically, looking after the receding straight back. She wondered if tomorrow she would be killed right away, or he would mock at first properly?

"Then what does Ren want from you?" the guy raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Hux is at the conference now, and the professor... apparently, he replaces him.”

“You know,” he drawled lazily, stretching out on the ground, “and if I were you, I would immediately make a run for Ren.”

This statement was so unexpected and strange that Rey was taken aback. She exhaled slowly, regaining consciousness, and stared at her classmate.

“Why?”

“Well. Ren is a big shot in the academic circles, and besides, he rakes in the money with his projects.”

“That’s not the point.”

“There you`re wrong,” he poked at her with a stalk of some kind of grass. “Look at me. I hit the jackpot last year when I went to my boss to do automated drone navigation. Thanks to my flight calculation algorithm, I’ve got the government grant in my pocket.”

"Don't talk big prematurely," Rey said annoyed. There was no doubt about Jeffers' words, but she couldn't betray Hux like that. She had clear concepts of honor and dignity despite of the fact what survivor her destiny had made of her.

“What could happen? I have almost finished everything, there are a couple of details left, but I am sure that I’ll solve them in the nearest future.”

“Hmm.”

“Oh, stop making value judgements about and think straight. A successful project guarantees you a good job. And you’ll have no luck with just few successful projects in cooperation with Hux.”

“But working with him is comfortable.”

“Well, you are not going to trail along behind him your entire life?” Ted remarked reasonably.

“Of course not.”

“That's it, Teedo,” the guy closed his eyes blissfully and with a true genius look.

Rey just shook her head in dispraise way. Her thoughts returned to the past incident again. Well, her need to question Phasma about tutorials had disappeared by itself. But it would have been better if Rey had walked to the laboratory, as planned before in the morning, instead of hanging around here. She cursed and began to collect her things. No matter how you sliced it, she had to go to the laboratory. Rey still didn’t know exactly where she should have been at four o'clock tomorrow in order to die in shame under the gaze of Kylo Ren.

Justin was already strumming some new melody, which Mel and Annette were pulling with soulful voices. Rey stood up and grabbed her bag.

“Where’re you going?” Ted called out to her.

“The narrow bed in the cemetery won't dig itself,” she sighed. “And tomorrow this grave would be useful for me.”

“Don’t overreact,” the guy waved his hand, stretching back on the grass. “Ren is a decent ass. I'm sure there were a million of such cases with him, and maybe something happened even worse.”

But this statement did not reassure Rey at all. She sighed and walked towards Building Thirty-nine on Vassar Street. She needed Phasma. By this time, a friend should have finished with the student interns, so she could hope for a cup of tea and a heart-to-heart conversation. All the way, Rey could not stop getting all worked up, and therefore, approaching the familiar laboratory, she almost flinged open the door with a kick, yelling well away:

“Phasma, I'm an epic idiot!”

And then she froze. The day couldn't get any worse, definitely not. Right there the figure of Ren towered in the middle of the room. Rey noticed how his back tightened at the sound of her voice. Without so much as turning around, he continued his talk with Phasma, who was smiling cheerfully at her speaking partner in response to some of his words. As usual, in the most terrible situations, idiotic thoughts crept into Rey’s head. For example, that her friend and professor were really almost of the same height. Although it seemed Ren was still slightly taller. Wow.

Hearing noise and shrieks, Tart peered out from behind the professor's massive figure and was about to say hello to Rey but she checked herself. Apparently, Rey’s features ran the gamut of emotions from shock to crimson blush on her cheeks. To Phasma's credit, she was quick on her mind, so she looked back at the professor with a dazzling smile.

“I’ve got it, Kylo. No problem, you can tutorials here tomorrow.”

“You're a star!” Ren drawled in an unexpectedly soft voice. “I owe you”.

“Remember my kindness,” Phasma nodded importantly, “And we'll talk about returning the favor later. Sorry, I have to go in fifteen minutes, to replace Hux.”

The professor nodded and, swiftly turning, walked away from the audience, not looking at the sudden guest. Rey managed only to jump aside so as not to get in his way. As soon as the door slammed shut, and the heavy steps subsided in the depths of the corridors, she turned to Phasma. The friend was picking up some papers from the table, folding them into a huge folder.

“You call him by his name even at the university” it wasn’t a question.

“Rey, we’d fucked each other for a month last year,” Tart rolled her eyes took up getting ready for the class. – “It would be strange to interact to him formally when I was holding his cock.”

"Spare me the details, please." Rey winced. Hell, she had never considered herself as a prude before, but all her behavior in recent days proved the opposite. What's happening?

“Great dick, by the way,” Phasma winked at her cheerfully, and then froze. “So, judging by your mutual disregard, something happened. Right?”

Rey groaned and covered her face with her hands as she plopped down on the high laboratory chair that was found somehow there.

“You have five minutes, and then I have to run,” the friend crossed her arms over her chest and rested her hip on the table, littered with some wires and switches. “So, I’m waiting.”

“He called me to inform about the time of the tutorial. I have not heard...”

Rey began and stopped.

“I don't notice anything criminal yet. Go ahead,” Phasma urged her on.

“Heartless woman,” Rey exclaimed, “Don’t you see, I’m going bright red with shame when I talk about this!”

“How interesting,” blue eyes flashed insidiously. “Round off a sentence. I want to know why Ren pretends to be offended and flies out of the audience with such a look as if he were ready to kill someone.”

“And he would have killed, honestly!” She exclaimed, and began to speak confusedly. “I have “Death on Two Legs” as a ringtone on his calls. and you know well what the text is there. Well, an affront after an affront! When he called, I was staring blankly at the phone, trying to understand what the hell he wanted from me! And this smug son of a bitch was standing behind me, listening to how he was offered to kiss the butt, and did nothing. God, Phaz, it was such a shame. Our entire group was gathered there.

A deafening laughter didn’t let her finish. The friend threw back her head and laughed sincerely until tears came to her eyes. Rey frowned silently.

“Damn it,” Phasma said with difficulty, still giggling. “I haven’t thought you would resist him for so long. Congratulations, Rey, you've reached the level. I guess, Kylo is about to curse you.”

“Holy crap! I'm telling you something different! Ren’s fucking insinuations do not bother me at all, but the fact that I put the professor in an awkward position in front of his own students ... Phaz, I have to study with him for another semester and a half.”

“My God,” the friend looked at her, as if she saw Rey for the first time, “is this really the only thing that worries you, Rey? Then you're either dumb or a saint.”

“What?”

“Do you care how this would affect his authority among students?”

“Well, yes.”

“I guess, it won’t.” Phasma grabbed the folder from her desk. “I think, Kylo Ren doesn't care at all what others think of him. But, judging by the mise-en-scene played out five minutes ago, he does not care at all how you treat him. And this is the most interesting thing.”

“You're delusional,” - Rey put her hand to her cold forehead. How all these endless charades got her. “Phasma, I….”

She was interrupted by the ringing of the phone. The friend pulled out her beeping mobile, buttoning side.

“I have to go. Let's talk over the poker tonight.”

Rey just waved her hand wearily. It was her own fault, having lost sight of the fact that the friend had been on Hux's substitute all week. What else could be argued about, she did not know. Meanwhile, Phasma thrust the key to the audience into her hands, ordering not to lose it until the evening, after that she ran off to the lecture. And Rey was left in splendid solitude, totally confused and ashamed and these feelings had not gone anywhere. What childish behavior had flown to her head that night? Of course, she was angry with the professor, but her behavior still remained stupid and frivolous. She sighed and took out her laptop. The code won’t be written by itself, and she would burn out of humiliation if she had to ask Ren for help in the end. And since Rey Teedohadn’t noticed the phoenix's abilities in herself, she had to push all her buttons and do what couldn't be done.

  
The time before poker flew by quickly. Several times the room was visited by students looking for Phasma or Hux, but overall, no one bothered her. However, she did not come closer to solving the problem either.

Rey struggled this and that way, trying to figure out why her code was not working. It hung, then refused even to start, diligently hiding errors that had crept inside. Rey swore through clenched teeth, searching for an answer through the forums, the textbook and in her own notes once again. Unfortunately, the notes could not help her much. Annoyed exceedingly, she slammed the MacBook's lid and shoved it into her bag. Maybe she would be lucky in today’s poker at least?

But her hopes were too optimistic. Finn brought Arnold with, and now their whole company was training the newcomer. Especially Rose succeeded in this, taking on her student seriously. Of course, all the luck immediately flowed to him, ignoring Rey completely. But she wasn’t offended. After all, it was so much fun to look at his face as he found the perfect combination once again. She even almost forgot about her talk with the malicious Tart when Phasma ran down Rey during the break. But just now, Rey would prefer not to bring up the sore subject.

“I have a feeling you’re trying to snuggle me in Ren’s tighter in his bed,” she muttered, looking around at her friend, who had become a little sleepy.

“You would just look great together,” she expressed an unexpected idea.

“Are you drunk?” She looked anxiously into Phasma's eyes.

“Rey, tell me, what you want from his man? let have it straight.”

“I'm not in the mood for drunken conversations,” Rey leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms and looking around the room. There was no sign of the ill-fated table from place they were sitting around, but she knew the professor was there. The car in the parking lot in front of the club, which she noticed immediately, gave itself away completely.

“Who's drunk here? I just want to understand you.”

“There is nothing to understand here. I am simply enraged by narcissistic asshole chauvinists who fuck everything that moves.”

Phasma looked at her closely, taking a sip of the unchanging beer.

“What makes you think that Ren is one of those?”

“Rumors are running ahead of him. Besides, Armitage confirmed ...”

“Well, he-e-echno,” Tart held out with a crooked grin. “Hux would have confirmed not only that.”

Rey looked in surprise at the matchmaker who stretched her long legs under the table.

"Are you implying that he misled me deliberately?" Rey refused to believe this nonsense. “Why would he? They are friends.”

“Yeah, there is no need in enemies with such friends. “

“Are you going to stop talking in riddles or not?” she was furious. But Phasma just shook her head.

“Never trust a man who slanders about his friend. This is even worse than two frenemies girls.

“Stop defending Ren and explain it clearly.

But instead, Phasma just looked at her as if she were blissful.

“No, Teedo, you're definitely a saint. Because even an idiot would have noticed… perhaps only an idiot would have noticed.” She fell silent somehow sadly, and Rey groaned, dropping her head on the table.

“Let's start over,” she suggested somewhere in the tablecloth.

“There’s nothing to start here.” Phasma picked up the deck, stirring the cards. “You want to see him as a monster, and you see, instead of just enjoying the attention.”

“But this is wrong! He is my teacher and I am his student. Such relationships are prohibited.”

“You two are adults, I don’t understand what problems might be there,” she shrugged, shaking off a shock of blond hair.

“What makes you think I want him at all?”

“It isn’t so?” blue eyes followed Rey slyly from under half-closed lids.

“Yes”.

“So why are you so worried and nervous about his attention? If you don't care, you would have told him to go to hell long ago, and that's it. But instead, you’re freaking out and fussing and worrying about some ridiculous little thing, like an insulting song in a contact list.”

“I don’t like your insinuations.

“And I don’t like that you’re lying to yourself and don’t even notice it,” she snapped, looking at her friend buried in the tablecloth again. “Give yourself a chance, Rey. In the end, even if it doesn't work out, you won't lose anything, but you can gain a lot.”

“Well, not through the bed!”

“Why is the whole matter boiling down to a bed?” Phasma finally broke down and threw the deck on the table in annoyance.

“Hey, ladies,” Arnold, who had just returned to the table, looked at them in surprise. “What's going on here?”

“Just tell me,” the friend turned to the guy who came up, “What do you think about a relationship between a student and a professor?

“Well, it's okay, that's nothing new in our college. You know, theater groups, everyone is in the similitude of any characters, creative people. Anything can happen, of course. Why?”

"He's not an indicator, Phasma," Rey snapped irritably.

“Wait,” she waved her off. “Do you believe that relationships are not limited by a bed only?”

“Well, of course, what stupid questions are there?” Arnold's blond eyebrows rose in surprise.

“Do you hear it?” Phasma raised her finger pointedly.

“And what do you want from me?” Rey asked wearily.

“Stop already living by double standards, determine the coordinate system that helps you evaluate people and not believe everything you hear. Yes, Ren has an unusual way of life in your opinion, but trust me, it's not as simple as you think.”

“Oh save it! I don’t want you to tell me tearful stories about men abandoned by the love of their lives,” she rolled her eyes. Arnold landed next to her, listening intently to their conversation.

“Is it about your "shadow" or …?” He asked unexpectedly, turning to her.

“What "shadow"?” Phasma climbed in immediately. The two blonde heads turned to Rey at the same time, one with interest, the other with irony.

“I was picking her up from work on Sunday ...”

“Oh, shut up, Arnold!” The girl exclaimed, throwing up her hands. It was only now to put the matter to public domain. “You promised.”

“It was about Finn.”

“Not only!”

“No, wait, wait,” the detective's excitement burned in Phasma's blue eyes. She nodded to the guy. “Go on.”

“Well, we drove out of the parking lot, and a flashy vehicle followed us. My God, what a car!”

“Black Mercedes coupe with such an insanely huge hood?” the girlfriend almost laughed out aloud, looking at the flushed Rey.

“Exactly,” Arnold nodded. “So, I wanted to drive as fast as usual. Well, the streets are empty at night, the most relish to drive. So this "shadow", as soon as I slightly exceeded the speed, immediately cut us off. After the third time, I already realized that he was doing this on purpose. And then we trudged to her house like turtles, and he was right behind us. And then he stood waiting not far from the entrance. He ran off at the same time when Finn had left already. He put foot to the floor so much that the tires screeched. Yeah, Rey, the car of your “shadow” is the real goods.”

“How long has it been ongoing with you, huh? Phasma elbowed her, giggling foolishly.

“Fuck off.”

“Seriously?” now both were staring at her.

“It's a long story.”

“The evening has just begun,” these two obviously got on perfectly and saluted her with glasses of beer. “Out with it!”


	8. Chapter 8

[](https://sun9-39.userapi.com/OLRITjTLV2r94F8zqCfR2RwIy8YhW-fP4NP1MQ/jQDhS5ssAjM.jpg) [](https://sun9-24.userapi.com/iPzoy7AI6H8tMwnv8R9RV6eHcxa7kv5XyceNDw/IhmsFo7Lciw.jpg)

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The night before the long-awaited day of her personal torments flew away in a flash of time to Rey’s eyes. And the dawn brought her closer in the first cosmic velocity to a tipping point of imminent moment. Ha! Yes, there will be just the Day of bloody Kylo Ren: first there a lecture comes, and then a progress tutorial was open to discussion – her knees were shaking so badly and Rey had her heart at her heels cause of awaiting of her evil destiny overtakes her belly-pinched mass. No matter, what Phasma said, no matter how she tried to change her mind, Rey could not get rid of her attitudetoward the professor. After that scene in the club on the very first evening, after his behavior in public, after all these hints and innuendo toward Rey herself - what was she supposed to think? Ren behaved unambiguously and quite consistent with the picture that she managed to draw for herself. And the imagination was also spurred on by Unkar's warning.

Glancing at the watch, which the hands pointed to half past nine in the morning, Rey sighed, closed her eyes and made up her mind. She had a couple of hours left to spend it for little whims. Taking a laptop from under the bed, she opened it and launched a search engine in her browser. Well, okay, Google... What can you tell us at the request about "Kylo Ren”. Just one click and links and photos fell out on Rey. First of all, her curiosity demanded to look at the pictures. With some surprise, she found a huge number of images from conferences, where Ren was standing either behind the podium, or next to a screen on which some flowcharts and graphs were presented. There was also an hour-long video of one of his TED talks at a developer conference last year. Launching YouTube in the background window, she flipped through the page, looking at Ren’s pictures in expensive well-tailored suits and with a constant arrogant smile. These images were interspersed with completely unexpected shots from some parties, official receptions, and even a couple of student photos. Her gaze lingered on one of the last, completely atypical: a young and thin, as if not even emaciated, boy of twenty smiled wryly at the camera, sitting against the background of some kind of plastered wall. Interested Rey clicked on the photo, but the browser immediately indicated that the page was not found or was deleted. Shrugging, she cursed the damn caching and listened to the familiar confident voice coming from the speakers. After a couple of seconds, Rey frantically made it louder.

_“__How many of us are aware of the fact that our developments are problematic? I think none of us. And of those who did think of it, only a few can say about their social and ethical importance. Others revel in the investment value of any sneeze._ _You be the judge, we create intelligence that is able to solve problems without human participation._ _We teach it, train it, and sometimes educate it. Does this remind you of anything?”_

The professor, slowly pacing in front of the audience, stopped and paused, looking around the audience. They kept dead silence.

_“How typical... And if I ask - why are we doing this? You will answer: we are trying to make life easier for many ordinary users, to bring goodness and convenience in their lives. Making the world safer, less risky. And you will, of course, be right. But consider a seemingly unrelated thought - what is our economy made of? It is obvious that each of us, working, producing something, contributes to its development. It's not for me to quote Marx for you, but since then, believe me, little has changed._ _This entire system in any country in the world is based on primitive compensation for contributions to commodity-money relations. On the other hand, more and more companies are using artificial intelligence, regardless of whether it is a manufacturing or a service sector. And this is exactly the point where the problems begin. Firstly, machines are becoming our competitors, reducing human resources day after day. Secondly, our experiments show that machine intelligence is even more biased than human intelligence. It depends entirely on what we teach it, and even the slightest shift in balance will lead to the fact that the computer will select exclusively white participants in beauty pageants. Last but not least, who will be to blame for the computer failure? Our algorithms perfectly determine by themselves how to react to events and whether to react at all. But are we able to we predict their logic? No. We create a neural network, but we do not manage it. The boundaries of responsibility are being erased. Even now it is impossible to say who is to blame: the user, the developer, or the one who taught the intelligence.”_

Rey stared at the small window in surprise. The professor continued his speech, again striding along the huge white screen on which graphs and figures glowed. He switched the slide and now was showing the relationship between the three largest manufacturing companies in the United States and three equally huge corporations from Silicon Valley. Both groups generated the same profit, except that the number of employees in the Valley was almost an order of magnitude less. Ren said something more and more, but her brain was unable to isolate anything definite from his speech, numb with surprise. _“We create a neural network, but we do not manage it.” _The slide blinked, drawing her attention to himself, and a teenager appeared on the screen with a game console in his hands.

_“__We work on it like neurosurgeons, breaking into the human brain, affecting the very center of reward. We have hundreds of techniques at our disposal, from testing to algorithmic optimizations, in order to grab people's attention_._ We delve into the depths of the psychology of the individual, we penetrate into its very essence in order to know how to influence, how to subdue the mind. Therefore, I will ask you - does it seem to you that we are playing the Lord God? Deciding for others how, __in what way__ and what to cause addiction and dependence, controlling the mind, subjugating a person through his weaknesses, fears and vices? Look, we even create machines in our own image and likeness,”_ Ren paused, catching his breath and throwing back his hair. Then he grimaced and folded his arms across his chest, addressing to the audience again. But now there was a kind of longing in his voice.

_“How much honesty and responsibility are left in ourselves until the moment we direct humanity to destructive behavior using only a few dozen lines of code? We have tremendous power in our hands, which many of you do not even realize, considering all this…”_ he gestured around the hall, where camera flashes flickered and two small drones flew for aerial photography. _“As innocent mind games.”_

Her finger twitched convulsively on the touchpad, stopping the video involuntarily. Although, this was even for the best, Rey was unable to continue listening to such unexpected speeches. For some reason it became scary. Previously, she had never thought about such questions, all science for her was of a purely school nature, inapplicable so far to life outside the educational vacuum. It seemed that these were all innocent laboratory and trifling projects. But now her eyes seemed to have been opened. Who is this man? Why was he allowed to talk about such issues so openly? Why would he bring this up at all?

_“We create a neural network, but we do not manage it.”_

Lord! Didn’t he really understand by doing this he was taking away a piece of daily bread from himself, or... or, on the contrary, Ren knew all too well what disasters a perverse desire for control in capable hands can lead to. Finn also said that the professor creates smart cars for the military, target pursuit systems and stuff like that. Oh, Heaven... Indeed, the game of the Lord God: with one hand he gives, the other takes away.

She quickly switched the page back to links and began searching for articles frantically. Of course, in the lectures the professor paid attention to every area where artificial intelligence could be used, but only now Rey realized to what extent machine intelligence surrounds them. It became the part of everyday life that people completely stopped noticing its presence. Hell, soon even the washing machine will be able to tell what Rey Teedo is a slob, and even it’ll post a Twitter about it. She giggled, thinking that all these news stories about people crazy with persecution mania were not without reason. Big Brother is watching them. Moreover, they create it every day by themselves, with their own hands, including her. That’s awful!

Having opened ‘ResearchGate’, Rey typed in her instructor's name and dived into the articles. After half an hour, she was finally able to peel herself off the screen and stared with a faraway look at the wall, having a mind-blowing almost-orgasm. There was only one question in her head - what had this person forgotten at the University? No, she had previously believed that he had nothing to do here, but now she was more and more convinced that all his teaching activities were pure charity. This man did not need to prove his genius, his actions spoke for him. Kylo Ren could bend over and fuck the whole world if he wanted to.

At the same time, she remembered the very first lecture where Rey with a straight face accused him of pottering his brain value. Then a conversation with Hux followed after it. Well, now everything was clearly explained to her how wrong she was, without giving out a single drop of information carefully guarded by the military. Of course, Ren did not provide a single line of his code in his publications, probably in strict compliance with the restrictions imposed by the Pentagon. But it did not prevent him from asking much deeper questions at all, provoking responses from scientists have a penchant for. His personality was revealed to her from a new and very unexpected side.

Her gaze drifted thoughtfully over the glowing laptop screen, where the search term was opened. A link to the MIT website with a brief biography of the professor caught her eye. Every teacher had such pages, but Rey, to her shame, never went to them, considering it a useless waste of time. She needed their knowledge and nothing else.

To delve into the personality traits of their professors seemed akin to peeping. The exception was Armitage Hux, but their situation was a little non-standard, whatever you say. She skimmed over the information that was revealed.

Kylo Ren was born thirty-four years ago in mid-November. Judging by the dates, he studied first at a private school, then suddenly transferred to home schooling program. He received an external diploma a year earlier than his peers and entered Massachusetts, at the same time took a military training course and began to cooperate with the Department of Defense. Remained at the institute for a PhD under the current President of the University, Samuel Snoke. After defending the thesis, he disappeared for about three years and returned five years ago to the alma mater, dinningknowledge into the heads of careless students three times a week. He was fond of music. Then there was an impressive list of publications, monographs, reports. Rey glanced at the list of his most recent works. Well, judging by the number of issues of scientific journals, Kylo Ren worked productively and a lot. Lots of. A staggering amount. Most of the articles, even judging only by the titles of editions, she will not get access even from the main library, but something can be read in her spare time. Ha! Perhaps it will be possible to get by with this kind of help from the teacher and not contact him personally in case of failure with the program. Deadline was not hardly looming on the horizon.

Returning to the search query, she was about to close the browser when her eye caught one of the links at the very end of the page. Rey stared in amusement at the site's address — the Boston police station. It was ... unexpected. The new tab blinked in the signature colors of the law enforcement officers, loading twenty-year-old roundups. She ran through the headlines for a familiar name, but found nothing like it. Just a message about the proceedings at a private school with a familiar name. Rey read it carefully, there could be no mistake. This was exactly the same school that Ren left. It was about some Ben Solo and one of the teachers or the director of the educational institution himself. But it was not interesting, and she closed the page in frustration.

Rey stared back at the frozen image of Kylo Ren in front of the red TED letters. Sadly to admit, but she needed to apologize to him. Although she did not understand why she was so oppressed by yesterday's little incident. But the professor definitely deserved trivial respect for his informal work of educating and encouraging people to reflect on what they were all doing.

‘Who the hell are you?’ She muttered, touching the small figure on the screen. Of course, the professor did not answer her, preferring to remain motionless in the window of the player. Rey snorted and slammed the laptop lid shut forcefully. Now she will have dreamed of enthusiastic sobs and servile groans. Well, it couldn’t be helped, smart men have always thrilled her.

Rey entered the class room when there were only a few people. She dropped her things on the table nearest the exit and sat down, recovering her breath. Pulling the scarf from her neck, she drew attention to Ted, who was busy with calculating something on the calculator. Glancing at his opened laptop, Rey froze.

“Don’t tell me you’ll do it, pale-faced moron!” She stared with all eyes at the three-dimensional image spinning on the screen.

“Why not?” the classmate muttered, writing down the resulting value.

She was silent, digesting what she saw.

“This is a bit much!”

“Come on, the car on top of the Big Dome is not too? My idea is just an innocent prank. Now let's fix something and everything will be great!”

“When will this happen?” Rey could not take her eyes off the huge black mask. “I’d rather to be somewhere in Brazil, and better in Australia at the moment when he sees it.”

“No panic,” the guy dismissed her, making the last amendments.

“When?” Rey kept up with him.

“Next week”

“And what will happen….” She groaned, slapping her forehead. The end of October crept up quitly. “Halloween.”

“Got the picture,” the asshole nodded, a smug smile spreading across his face.

“Stupid idea, Ted. If he finds out who did it, we are dead.”

“If you keep your mouth shut, he won't know.”

Rey was about to say something else, but at that moment Professor Ren burst into the lecture hall, and Ted slammed the laptop lid down with lightning speed. The insistent thought spun in her head that she needed to apologize to Ren urgently before it was too late. If he finds out who is to blame for all the nonsense that this classmate has started, then, no doubt, he would tear out her too long tongue. And he would hang it instead of "stars and stripes" on the top of the main university building. She sighed and looked at the teacher, who was already focused on the new material with might and main. He had no idea what scandal was ripening in Ted's computer. Apologize urgently, her inner voice demanded.

The lecture passed faster than Usain Bolt on the track. After today's discoveries, forgetting for a while about all her grievances and suspicions, Rey listened with some eagerness to every word of the professor. She was seized by wild delight and admiration when she realized again and again how much knowledge is hidden in his head. She wanted to open his skull carefully and reverently admire these beautiful convolutions. No, she had never doubted his talent before, just today something has changed imperceptibly. Deep down, everyone wants to play Bruce Almighty, to feel the power over minds. It didn’t matter if there was youthful exuberance or the delight of curiosity inherent in every student. It only madesense that Ren was able to show and teach them this. Damn it, if there weren’t such murky, incomprehensible story, which had been dragging on for two months, she would have given everything in the world to come into contact with his genius to at least a little bit. To walk along the edge of his mind. But fucking pride, hurt on the very first evening and her own prejudice to his behavior ... Through this, Rey was unable to step over and put an end to her dreams for a while. at long last, you cannot change your views on decency and virtue for the sake of one person, can you?

After the lecture, when the enthusiastic crowd of women finally got unstuck from the man hurrying about his business, they gathered in full in "Square of Four". Over a slice of pizza, fellow students discussed current student affairs with each other, someone bragged about the next articles. But even trying to win back her piece of cheese, which was trying to slip off the thin dough, Rey did not give up trying to reason with Ted.

“Do you understand that you can ruin his car?” she hissed in the guy's ear, trying to prevent the others from hearing her.

“I’m not going to ruin anything. I have foreseen everything: the structure is light, it will hold on to black ropes under the belly of his beloved wheels.”

“Will you fix it in broad daylight? In plain sight?” Rey finally defeated the insidious mozzarella and put the long-awaited slice in her mouth.

“Take it easy, we’ve thought of everything.” Ted also got into an unequal cheese fight for his piece.

“We?! Who else is involved in this suicide action besides you?” Her whisper reached unimaginable heights.

“Two dudes from industrial design. They developed it all, by the way. Cool guys, and they have heaps of ideas!” the guy's jaws worked quickly, absorbing piece by piece. He didn’t notice the tomato juice flowing down his fingers.

Rey groaned. She had a very bad feeling about the whole thing. Particularly unnerving was the fact that it was she the one who would cause this indirectly. This!

“…and the community is giving a Halloween party at ‘Wise Charles’. Rey, will you come?

“What?” She perked up, hearing the voice of Catherine right above her ear. It turns out that she managed to skip all the enthusiastic and, apparently, very long speech of her classmate. She resentfully waved her extended eyelashes, but condescended and repeated a brief squeeze of the previous monologue:

“The ‘Phi Beta Kappa’ community is giving a party with the ‘Pi Tau Sigma’ fraternity. You understand? The most elite brotherhoods open their doors to mere mortals. It will be just great fun! Entry only for graduate students and masters of the last year of graduation. And now I ask you - will you come?”

"I'm not sure," Rey muttered, confused.

She never tried to find herself in any communities or sisterhoods, shying away from their crazy parties, gags and too chaotic lifestyle. While her classmates were running recklessly and with eyes burning with delight from one brotherhood to another, she watched from afar how they poured liters of alcohol into themselves and had fun cheerfully, having a wonderful youth. Rey only found out about her heart problems upon admission. At the very first medical examination, when specialists with normal equipment took over. Before that, she was seen only once a year by an ordinary general therapist from a free clinic in Jakku, giving only the necessary vaccinations. In Massachusetts, she was taken aback by this news. It was a real shock. She refused to believe in her diagnosis until the first echocardiography test in her life.

Doctors said something about a lack of folic acid, a genetic malfunction, a possible teratogenic effect of any medications. They said that everything was fixable and operable. And she thought of her mother, who, instead of vitamins, normal food and sleep, had only a bottle of cheap liquor and another dirty dose. Thanks God, at least without HIV. Then hatred raged in Rey. She wanted to find this peace of shit that hadn’t had pregnancy terminated, and personally break her neck. She perfectly remembered how she’d been either sobbing on Finn's shoulder the whole evening, or then throwing things, or just sitting, indifferent to everything. On that day, for the first time, she felt not a weak aching pain in her sternum, but an obsessive stabbing. She was plumb scared. And never again she let herself release this quiet storm, all of the heap cutting herself out the cheerful student life, where she did not have time to enter.

“Come on! You don’t really go anywhere with us anyway,” the redhead did not calm down. “Come on, Rey! This is the last Halloween before the graduation”.

“Ok, fine!” she succumbed to persuasion unexpectedly for herself. After all, it was really the last year.

“Cool!” Catherine squeezed her in her arms, that made Rey grimace.

“I forgot to tell - it's a costume party.”

“Oh no...”

“Oh yeah!” red hair whipped her cheek as a classmate jumped up enthusiastically.

“A student's costume is certainly not accepted,” Rey muttered to herself rather than to others.

“Of course,” Annette, sitting next to her, echoed her tone.

Rey glanced at the clock on the opposite wall, which depicted all kinds of pizza at once. The time of progress tutorial was approaching inexorably, and it was necessary to get ready.

“What, dug a grave already?” Ted said quietly, following her actions. The hands of the clock confidently indicated half past three.

“I didn’t have time, because I ‘d been trying to find words for an apology the whole evening,” she put on her coat and wrapped her gigantic scarf, looking out the window. It was rapidly darkening due to heavy clouds that had come running from the ocean. The weather deteriorated sharply again, portending fog and drizzle in the evening. Typical Boston, damn it.

“Don't forget to sprinkle ashes upon your head,” the guy shouted to her on the way, bursting out laughing at his stupid joke.

“Go to hell,” she snapped back benignly and opened the door. The bell chimed softly, and gusts of icy wind burst into the warm hall. Blinking her eyes, Rey took a step outside. How she hated the cold.

She got to Hux's laboratory in a matter of minutes, not wanting to be in the piercing drafts for a second longer than she should. Due to the closely spaced buildings and narrow passages between them, Vassar Street turned into one continuous wind tunnel on such days. Even now, put any racing car here and explore the eddy currents around it.

“It's good that you came early,” Phasma exclaimed. “I have to go, and Ren has no key.”

“Has he shown up yet?” Rey reached out, folding her clothes on one of the slightly littered tables in the farthest corner. It seems like one group just had some lab work. The audience was filled with a light scent of burnt plastic and heated metal. She looked around the room. “We should have cleaned up here already.”

“You are his first today. And no, not worth it. Otherwise, Hux, when he returns, would find nothing and would run like a chicken with a severed head.”

Rey finally noticed her blonde friend and whistled.

“Why are you dressing out like that?”

Phasma looked really stunning today. This tall blonde with breathtaking legs could have made a gorgeous career as a model, but she preferred to pore over another microcircuit in the laboratory. As she said, she could be equally lighten up by sex with a man and by a microcontroller, because there was no difference between them. If you know what end to apply voltage.

“I have a date today.” Phasma took a lipstick out of her coat pocket and looked around for a mirror. Realizing that it had never been in this room, she picked up the phone, examining her reflection.

“I'm very glad for you,” Rey said sincerely, sitting down on the edge of the table.

“Come on, blind dating is not something to be proud of at my age,” her friend muttered, touching her lip line with a sharp fingernail.

“But it's at least something! Look at me and remember - don't be like that,” she ironically pointed her fingers at herself, inviting her to evaluate the whole tragedy of her personal life.

“How long have you had anyone?” Phasma's sky blue eyes stared at her.

“A year or so,” Rey shrugged.

“Nightmare!”

“I really have no time for a relationship now,” she began, but immediately raised her hand, stopping a remark, ready to escape from the lips of her personal pimp. She knew everything Tart could say. In the end, this dialogue was repeated between them with enviable regularity. “And it's not just my state of health. I don't even have time to sleep, not to mention the guys.”

Phasma walked over to her and sat down on a chair nearby so that their eyes were on the same level. Her face showed undisguised concern, so Rey involuntarily rolled her eyes.

“I do not. I'm not dying.”

“But you don’t live either,” a blond strand fell on her face. Phasma smelled deliciously of some kind of flowers. “Rey, look at you, what are you doing?”

“Am I building a reserve for the future?”

“At this rate, you will meet your future in the hospital with life-supporting appliance,” it seemed, the friend was getting angry.

“Can you suggest another option?” Rey lost her temper finally, too, and jumped off the table, going to the farthest corner of the room. Her voice sounded loud and annoyed. “I have no parents who could take care of me for a year or two while I am undergoing treatment. Who will feed me, dress me and pay my hospital bills? You all like to pretend to be an attentive person, because it's so easy to drub constantly an idea into my head that I wouldn’t able to do it. And, damn you all, at least one would come up and say: “Yes, Rey, it's hard for you, but you're done! You can handle it, I believe in you!” But instead, over and over, you face me with funereal expressions. When will you realize that this would be my only chance to win through somewhere? Your pity chokes off and does not help a thing”.

She finally ran out of gas and fell silent, panting and holding back angry tears. How tired she was of all this far-fetched concern.

“I'm sorry you think so,” Phasma said quietly and sadly after a short silence.

“Me, too. But this is how it looks from the outside,” Rey sighed and smiled forcefully. “Just go, you seem to be in a hurry”.

“Oh”, the friend jumped up and rushed to get her bag.

With a wave of goodbye, she went to the door, where she ran straight into Professor Ren.

“Kylo,” Phasma broke into a smile and kissed the man on the cheek.

“You look great,” Ren's low voice reappeared with the same softness Rey had heard for the first time yesterday in the afternoon. She made sure no one noticed her roll her eyes.

“You are such courtliness as always. I'm sorry, I have to go. The key is on Hux's desk,” with these words, the friend flew out of the audience, and silence reigned.

“Good evening, Professor.” Rey decided to give a sign of her presence. As she thought, Ren hadn't noticed that she was here too. At the sound of her voice, he turned sharply and stared at her with intent, unblinking eyes.

“Evening, Miss Teedo,” he finally greeted. “I am glad that you nevertheless forced yourself and did not bring along a priest and a winding sheet.”

Rey blushed and lowered her eyes, straightening out the invisible folds on her dress with a trembling hand.

“Professor, I wanted to ...” she began, but Ren interrupted her.

“We are running short of time. Show me what you have there. Armitage put me into the picture, but I would like to see everything with my own eyes.”

She hesitated for exactly a second before walking calmly towards her laptop under her coat. It would be the first time anyone else, except Hux and Rey, will see the brainchild of two years of labors. Was she worried? Damn it, and how!

Meanwhile, the professor sat down at one of the work tables that stood around the perimeter of the lecture hall. With a lazy gesture, he pushed aside the next bundles of wires and briefcases with parts. After hesitating for a couple of seconds, Ren reached out with his long hand, grabbing another chair and placing it next to him.

“Be my guest,” he made an inviting gesture.

Rey sat down on the seat offered to her, feeling her knees trembling, and tried to abstract from the warmth radiating from her teacher. Ren was still overpowered her. How many times had she sat like this next to Hux, but she had never felt so constrained. Opening the laptop, she launched the compiler and began:

“My program was created for sequencing DNA molecules by means of nanopores. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that it combines all possible options for determining the sequence of proteins of this type. The main idea is to create its own library and the ability to distinguish the protein structure by scraps and fragments...” her voice sounded solid and measuredly. Hands highlighted pieces of code automatically, pointing to comments and hiding skillfully those facts, which disclosure was not agreed with NASA. Ren was staring at the laptop screen, arms folded across his chest and leaning back in a chair that was too small for him. She was just about to describe the options for reading the signal from the installation when the professor interrupted her.

“As far as I understand, it is supposed to teach the program autonomously to search for similar components and sections of amino acid sequence chains.”

“Quite right,” Rey said carefully, a little bewildered by the unexpectedness of the question.

“Show me,” it was an order given in a cold and harsh tone.

“Unfortunately, this is not possible,” Rey bit her lip, mentally cursing Hux. It was clearly it had not been without Hux’ chatter. She hated it when she was told to do anything in that way, but she understood that in this case, asking to soften the tone was useless.

“Why not?” the professor's eyebrow went up mockingly.

“I have no right to discuss this matter with anyone other than my boss and my client, sir.”

“Ah-ah-ah,” Ren drawled, stretching his long legs and accidentally touching her shin. “If it's a question of clearance level, then you can believe me that your little secrets with Hux are too insignificant for the scale of my tasks.”

Rey gasped in righteous anger. A son of a bitch! Who did he think he was to be so dismissive of her work? With an incredible effort of will, she pulled herself together and lowered her eyes to the floor so as not to betray the rage that overwhelmed her. _Tact, politeness and distance_...

“I can well believe it, sir,” she said. “But I have a signed contract, and your name does not appear among the agreed persons on any of the twenty-three pages.”

Now Rey thanked all the gods for being able to answer that way. Anger was anger, but it wasn't matter whether Ren had access to it or not. Who cared about this bloody point if she just had nothing to show. All her attempts to curb her wayward logic crashed on the stone of lack of experience. It was the piece that assumed machine learning, the specifics of the operational profile of the damned Kylo Ren. Of course, he was interested to see how the student coped with the task, because he shelled it as easy as peas at breakfast. Why couldn't Hux keep his mouth shut? Why did he blurt out everything about the project over a glass of some beer? Just worried? Or bragging of it? Shame and anger rushed at the same time, but the professor's next words made her look at him in amazement. He seemed to be reading minds.

“Perhaps, the problem is that you have nothing to show?” he bent unexpectedly to her face, trying to read something in her in surprise wide opened eyes. Rey was sure the word ‘PANIC’ was running in large letters there.

Ren leaned back in his chair again, causing his hair to tumble down wild over his shoulders. He ran his fingers thoughtfully along his chin. Rey was speechless. Thoughts flew out of her head like a flock of stupid pigeons, leaving behind a hellhole and trash. Hux had no right to voice something more of their work than the name of the project!

“It may be” She started, but the teacher interrupted her again.

“So, you admit you failed?” the professor drawled sarcastically. He seemed to take genuine pleasure in blocking her in the stalemate.

“I said “it may be”. In any case, I have no right to tell you about such details of my work. Sir.”

She tried to be polite. Honestly, she tried very hard to control herself and not to be rude, looking straight into his face, distorted by a nasty grin. _Tact, politeness, distance_ ...

“Hux is a good electronics engineer, but a lousy programmer. Have you ever thought about changing your thesis advisor?” he said it so easily and relaxed that the meaning of the words did not reach her immediately.

Rey stared in amazement at the man who was looking around the audience indifferently. All the ashes of Hell to his liver! It's one thing if a fellow student jokes like that, but such coming from the teacher words sound almost blasphemous. She felt the last crumbs of patience and respect for this man dissolve into bitterness from all the baseness of the proposal. It was already beyond good and evil. Ren stuck the knife in his friend's back and turned it around slowly.

“Professor Hux is fine with me,” she constrained herself to speak through clenched teeth.

“Of course,” he grimaced. “Only his personal motives will not help you in the future”.

Rey blinked in surprise. What was he talking about?

“I am quite capable of dealing with my own prospects and do not need anyone's help. Even Professor Hux’”.

"Is that so, Miss Tido? A small graduate of a Catholic orphanage, abandoned by her own drug addicted mother. A girl who has only a homosexual electronics engineer as her close friend hardly knows much about how life works outside of her sterile world.”

“How do you know?” Rey asked with white lips, clenching her fists. Ren grinned predatory, not taking his gaze from her.

“I know much. Information is just a collection of zeros and ones, there is nothing new or secret in them. Think it over, Miss Tido, Armitage Hux is probably good in many ways. But definitely he won’t contribute to your career.”

“And you kindly offer to switch sides you could cover me up for?” she came to her senses gradually. She didn’t care where he read her biography. At least he could steak a personal file from the university administration.

“Please note, I did not give any names, _you_ drew such conclusions. But in the main, why not?” he threw up his hands picturesquely, showing that he had not considered such an option. “Would you like to continue writing work under my supervision?”

Rey closed her eyes wearily. At this moment, she hated this man so much that she could hardly restrain herself so as not to slap him in the face. To betray his own friend in this way is to have tremendous talent and arrogance. Bravo, professor! You are breaking another record for the title of Earth's Supreme Asshole.

“Unfortunately,” her voice sounded cool and as indifferent as possible, “I have to refuse such a tempting offer.”

“May I ask why?”

It became obvious that Ren would not abandon his attempts to persuade her today. If only she knew why he needed it. To tease Hux? To make Rey flare up? After all, he could not seriously think that she would leave her supervisor at the very end, after three years of their joint work. Or he still could?

"Of course, Professor," Rey felt sick at her fruity voice. “I am almost sure that despite the lack of my own experience, it won’t be difficult for me to deal with the problem. But it must be a hell for you to focus on my work for any length of time. You change your_ passions_ so easily.”

With these words, she abruptly jumped up from her chair, loudly slamming the laptop lid. And, picking up an innocent devise, she went for her coat. Her rebuke was unfair and offensive, Rey knew that perfectly well. But the words cannot be taken back, if they have fallen from the tongue. Already at the very door she practically collided with Ren, who, obviously, got up off a chair and followed her.

“We're not done yet, Miss Teedo,” he leaned toward her, and the coldness of his voice could freeze the water.

However, Rey was too angry, frustrated and confused to be stopped by anything in this world. She turned around on a sudden to look at him, and a strand of brown hair whipping upward slapped his face. Apparently, it hurt enough, Ren recoiled involuntarily and straightened, staring at her disheveled hair.

“You may be not, Professor,” she said quietly, looking into his dark eyes filled with anger. “But I definitely am. Good day!”

With these words, she left quickly the audience, restraining herself not to slam the door with all her might. She seethed with anger all the way to the subway as she battled the squally wind, barely noticing it. And just sitting in the semi-dark carriage, Rey giggled hysterically. So she “apologized”...

She spent the end of the day wandering aimlessly around the apartment, biting into Finn's favorite cookies and scattering crumbs all over the place. The clothes had smelled again with the professor’s perfume, and Rey frantically tried to get rid of the obsessive scent. She ripped off her dress, tossed it into the laundry basket and closed the lid for safety. But the pesky fleur did not go anywhere, as if it had eaten into the skin deeply. After washing her hands three times and sluicedher face, Rey sat down on the edge of the bath and laughed bitterly. And after all that happened, how is she going to attend Ren’s classes? Holy Heavens, she just had no idea what to do next.

Rey tried to set to the program, but could not get away from thinking about what happened in the lab. Yes, the phrase dropped at the end of the conversation was a lie from beginning to end, but his act was also a source of ardent disgust. How could he do this to his friend? It has been considered for ages as mean, vile and unworthy to pirate. And also an equally difficult question arose before her, if it’s worth talking about what happened to Hux, and if so, then how? No answer was found. When Finn returned at eleven or so in the evening, Rey was so exhausted that she simply crashed into bed, ignoring any attempts of her friend to chat.

The weekend brought nothing with it, except for a shaky alarm, a spine-tingling wind and rare fogs. Life at Takodana went on as usual, and Rey was happy about it. The familiar work occupied the brain well, sending all inappropriate thoughts and fears to the back of her consciousness. Professor Ren didn’t appear and his usual table stood empty. After thanking all the supreme forces for such opportunity, Rey was able to ponder the ambiguous situation calmly. And as a result, she came to the conclusion that Kylo Ren provoked her deliberately. Again. Every damn time they talked was a clever and disgusting provocation to make Rey flash up. If he did it out of spite or with some intention, it was known only to him - it didn’t matter. The only thing was clear - Rey acted unprofessional and ill-mannered, becoming personal and hurling unfair, for the most part, accusations. She used to find a peaceful way out of any situation, but she did not succeed it as far as it went to Ren. And when did she become so rude? It was likely Ren's claims on her are growing as significantly as skyrocketing. And God knows what prise he would make her pay.

On Monday, the last one in this October, Rey sank wearily onto the lecture bench, resting her head on her folded arms. Today (however, as well as yesterday and, of course, tomorrow) she would give anything for the opportunity to sleep. The more time passed, the more she hated the first day of the week. After shifts at the club, she hardly had time to rest, and her body took revenge for it with special sophistication. In addition, the lecture on power electronics, which ended half an hour ago, was one of the most boring in her memory. Endless schemes merged in front of her sleepy eyes into a dense stream of black and white slides. They replaced each other and did not linger at all in her head, sweeping by with some unintelligible spots. How she would take the final test it remained a mystery. Rey chuckled wryly, thinking, it would only happen with God's help.

Ted flopped down beside her again and winked conspiratorially. Rey groaned, anticipating the next continuation of his crazy idea, and was not mistaken.

“I found out where he parks the car,” a classmate whispered to her smugly. Even his freckles glowed with delight on his pale face.

“Just spare the details. I don’t want to come down as an accomplice to the mess that you’ve started.”

“Teedo, you don’t understand anything about the real life of Massachusetts!” he said offended.

But he quickly returned to his excited state. Rey even thought about taking him to the lab to the nuclear scientists - maybe, Ted would be able to make an interdimensional transition from such delight. The appearance of Professor Ren, as always, surrounded by a flock of her classmates, did not give her the chance to think of this idea. A cheerful thought flashed through her head, if they watching him over around the corner? But then a contemptuous and derogatory look of brown eyes flew in her direction, and her good mood vanished like greenhouse gas of a factory chimney. Kylo Ren hasn’t forgotten anything and hasn’t forgiven anything. Rey sighed, feeling the tips of her ears flush. She has played herself play oneself into a corner. Rey could neither quit the course, nor speak normally with the professor. Just a damn vicious circle. In hell.


	9. Chapter 9

[](https://sun9-62.userapi.com/1BDBln-bsHhxQNjrSzw5kR1IQCNMl9N4f0Oh4w/q0jMvqU5VOI.jpg) [](https://sun9-36.userapi.com/ZL96RXDtBR156MC8C2zhIxTGDP44ciC11qEoKA/J6LW93KDGpw.jpg)

After Ren’s lecture on Monday, Rey didn’t stop shaking with fear, being flabbergasted by her own insanity. Even if she were high as a kite with amp joint she could not imagine such offensive behavior of herself in her conversation with the teacher. But Ren... Every time, this asshole used to manage to headline a possibility to bring things to a desperate pass. He pulled out the worst, diligently hidden in dark corners of Mind Palace. She was afraid of Hux' reaction, afraid what the bastard could tell him. Lord, Rey wanted more than anything not to disappoint her supervisor. Ren had public image as a scientist, power and long-term friendship with Hux, she has got reputation in the bud. There were almost no chances for a favorable outcome of shit that happened.

Wednesday morning began with a phone call. Someone, very persistent, tried to contact Rey and definitely desired to get a dose of choicest swearwords. Blinking, she stared at the wall clock that hands pointed half past seven. Oh, Machete kills! Meanwhile the phone was vibrating somewhere on the floor. Without looking Rey reached out for it tried to grope the cool metal case, however, her fingers caught nothing. Having fumbled for a while on the wooden floor planks, just for f decency's sake, she leaned over the edge of the bed with a groan. The obsessive buzzing stopped for a few seconds to sound again and a little muffled than before. It seemed like someone was desperately in a very hurry to end it all. The loss was found far under the bed, where it had time to gallop away briskly. Rey scrambled back up and fell onto the pillows peering into the burning screen, where the inscription "Armitage Hux" appeared. She had a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.

“Good morning professor,” she muttered into the microphone, trying to wake up the still dormant brain. A sharp electronic a voice, whose screeching frequencies cut painfully in the ears, rang out. Somewhere a flight Boston-Chicago was announced for boarding. So, Hux had just arrived.

“Rey, hello” radio waves shone with the cheerfulness of Armitage, tireless Morning Lark. “I'm sorry for my calling so early, but then I'll run myself ragged and I’ll forget about it for sure.”

“It's okay, sir. I'm listening to you,” Rey said carefully, anticipating an angry scolding for her rudeness and unprofessionalism. Ah, yeah, for unfinished program, too, of course.

“I wanted to ask you…” the teacher's voice remained amazing welcoming. “Come, please, to my office after classes. And then the conference is right around the corner, and we still haven’t discussed the final report.”

“No problem.”

Mother of God! Didn't he know anything? Or already knew, but wanted to kill her personally?

“All right”.

And Hux disconnected, leaving Rey on the anxious seat with an uncertainty feeling, curled up in her stomach like a poisonous snake. Damn it. Why has Kylo Ren appeared in her life? Just to meet his match this time? She rolled off the bed with a groan, thrusting her feet into all-time used wookiee slippers. Then Rey pulled on Finn's faded sweatshirt reaching almost to the middle of her thigh. Twisting her hair into a more or less orderly nest on her head, she left the room just barelegged and with shaggy shoes. Apparently, the impressive sight turned out to be one hell of, because sleepy Finn narrowed his eyes and tried to get a better look.

“What the hell are you wearing?” he finally issued, making a big a sip of coffee.

"Fuck off," Rey muttered, shuffling into the bathroom. At this early hour she didn't give a shit what other people thought about her appearance. She wanted to sleep, eat and to go to bed again.

“Uh, no, baby. That won’t do”, the guy definitely wanted to get on a hobby-horse and give a talk about the importance of style in the life of every woman.

“Shut up,” without looking, she put her hand in his direction with a middle finger sticking out.

“The Princess and the Pea,” Finn sighed heavily, understanding the whole the futility of his attempts. It was nothing more than impossible to reach his friend. So, the door slam became final point in conversation. The guy muttered: “Where are you, faithful prince, with nerves of steel and brass balls? Others can't reign her in...”

Rey put her hands on the cold edge of the sink and leaned her forehead against mirror surface of the wall cabinet.

“Come on, dishrag! Keep a stiff upper lip and pull yourself together at last!"

She looked around herself in the reflection, where feverishly reddened eyes stood out on the pale face. Great, the vampire costume for the next party is already guaranteed and no makeup needed. It remains only to stick the fangs, and the image is worthy of the Broadway stage.

After brushing her teeth and washing her face, Rey crawled out of the bathroom and plopped down on a chair opposite Finn. Сombing long strands by force of habit, she indifferently looked at her friend's crushing flakes. Her own appetite disappeared for somewhere.

“Hux is back.”

“I know. I'm rushing along to him now,” Finn dexterously dealt with corn rings with apple and cinnamon flavor.

“Oh, so he made your day early in the morning?”

“No, he called yesterday,” he muttered with a full mouth. Rey watched with interest as Finn tried to stuff another spoon.

“My God, don't be in such a hurry!”

“I can't, I'm late,” the mighty swallowing movement came out so noisy that she grimaced.

“It is not news...”

“Are you going to have breakfast?” Finn was already throwing an empty plate in the sink, drinking the last of the warm coffee on the go.

“Later, '' Rey brushed aside, causing a displeased look from her personal nanny.

“You need to eat more.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Definitely, as soon as I find where I lost my appetite and spare liver. Sorry, but I am not able to digest so much dubious food”.

“It's organic flakes!” the friend was indignant, putting on a jacket and picking up a pretty shabby briefcase. Putting on his sneakers, he headed for the exit.

“When I hear the word “organic”, I immediately remember oil, gasoline and a whole bunch of polymers. You need to read less advertising, Finn...”

She stopped abruptly at the sound of the front door closing. This moron just ignored her moral lectures, deciding to get out of the apartment as soon as possible. Rey sighed and turned away when there was another click of the lock.

“Do not forget the pills”, a friend's head appeared in the doorway and disappeared again, depriving the last opportunity to give an earful. Rey stared with mute longing at the painted dark blue door, dreaming of the return of this bastard. It was all in vain.

With an effort, shoving into herself as many as five tablespoons of sweet crumb, savoring of chemistry, Rey got into frayed jeans and the first available sweater. Finn would no doubt have scolded for such an appearance, but she had neither the strength nor the desire to come up with something more complex or feminine today. Outside, Rey wrapped herself tighter in soft wool, hiding her instantly frozen nose from the cold morning air. Having stuck headphones in her ears, she turned on a phone player and plunged into cool U2 music. Bono moaned inwardly like he couldn’t live with or without her while Rey was hopping on the bus that had to lift her to the subway. Sakes alive, it’s not a human, it’s just principle of uncertainty in flesh-and-blood.

Long red brick building number twenty-five on Cardboard Street, where the MIT medical service was located, stood out as a bright spot on background of gray sky. Glass wall from the ground to the top floor ended with the same glass tower and was softly illuminated from the inside standard light of office lamps. Looking up to the top, Rey exhaled and climbed the steps leading to the revolving door. In a spacious lobby, she briefly greeted the nurses at the reception and went to left wing. She felt uncomfortable every time she passed by here. Even now, before reaching the elevators, Rey was getting nervous. The steel doors of the mechanical box opened, letting her out, and she rushed to the third floor. There, behind doors of the same wenge-colored type there was a physiotherapy department. The room she needed with a light blue sign where the room number was illuminated was in the very end of a long narrow passage. Knocking gently, she popped her head in at the door.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Chen,” Rey gently greeted the elderly a man seated in a spacious beige leather chair. Kaishi Chen was a small and thin man with gray hair. Doctor's skin seemed surprisingly smooth at his venerable age, and Rey suspected that it wasn’t possible without Asian magic. “Do you have some time now?”

“Ah, Miss Tido,” the doctor smiled, affectionately looking at her with his watery brown eyes. “It's good that you are early. Come on in.”

“I have a progress tutorial with my supervisor in the evening”, Rey smiled shyly as she walked into the light office. The peach-colored blinds were closed, letting the light in and coloring it in soft halftones. It was a bit inconvenient to bother the doctor out the appointed time, but she did not dare to cancel annual screening, too.

“So, you keep running like a hamster in the spinning wheel”, Chen shook his head, at once looking like a souvenir doll from a Chinese junk shop.

“This is Massachusetts.” Rey threw up her hands as if her words explained everything. But the doctor understood.

“Of course, of course. Well, tell me what’s news, but for now I'll call Sarah. Let her put the sensors.

He pressed the button to call the nurse, then turned to the patient, located on a small bench near the exercise bike.

“Well, nothing special happened ...” she began, but Dr. Chen already jumped out of the chair quite deftly and took a penlight out of his chest pocket. A beam of bright light hit Rey in the eyes, and she blinked involuntarily.

“Do you take medicine?”

“I do”

“And how is it going by now?”

“This time it is better. Shortness of breath is almost gone, I'm less tired and there is no cough more.”

“Did you have colds?”

“Lucky for a while.”

The doctor busily examined her throat, handed-on the lymph nodes and listened to her lungs, grimacing at the familiar noises in her heart.

“Nothing happened, you said? But your capillaries think differently,” he muttered, taking her hand in his hands and examining the translucent veins.

“When was the attack?”

“About a month ago,” Rey surrendered. “Not strong, I’ve just got nervous.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the appearance of a plump young nurse, whose fiery red curls of hair stuck out in a golden halo around the head. A welcoming smile appeared on her kind face.

“Hi, Rey,” Sarah waved her hand and turned to the doctor. “The electrocardiograph, Dr. Chen?”

“Yes, Sarah. With an EST immediately”

The nurse set up a panel screen around the exercise bike busily, her gaze showing the patient to stand up behind it. Under the cover of a white shield, Rey pulled off her jacket and lifted her T-shirt with her habitual movement, allowing Sarah attach the circular sensors to the skin and snap a heart rate monitor onto the index finger.

“Let's hit the road,'' she muttered, as soon as Rey perched on the seat and found the foot pedals. The cardiograph buzzed, recording, she rushed rapidly in place. Judging by the built-in electronic scoreboard, it was not more than five minutes before Dr.Chen stopped her, but Rey was already breathing heavily.

“You know what I'm going to tell you,” the doctor's little eyes followed the girl carefully. After a couple of minutes, she sank wearily into a chair opposite him.

“The main thing is that it isn’t getting worse yet...”

“But it is, Miss Teedo,” interrupted the doctor. “Can't help but get. If you had had surgery as an infant, you wouldn’t have cared a rap by now. In light of this, we are just wasting such precious time.

"I understand," Rey muttered, biting her lip stubbornly.

“I won't hide it, I am alarmed by the load and stress that you’ve taken on. The arrhythmia is growing and the pains will intensify.” He put his hands on the table and clasped his short fingers into the lock.

“This is the final year, sir. Then it gets easier.”

“Being aware of you, Miss Teedo, I doubt it very much. It would be a great piece of luck when you are ready for surgery prime time in a couple of years and someone else is still going to sustain an operation on such a heart.”

“I understand,” she said again, nodding. And Dr. Chen sighed wearily.

“All I can do it is just strongly to recommend you get more rest. And it would be nice to have a comprehensive examination soon. Your extended insurance covers these costs.”

“Okay.” Another submissive nod.

“Rey! it is not a laughing matter, you can’t stand it. Your heart may collapse. Do you understand it?”

“Of course, Dr. Chen.”

And here again... Again and again she was convinced that she wouldn’t cope. One after another was undermining faith in herself at once, but she wouldn’t give up so easily. It seemed friends and doctors had conspired to drown her with their anxiety, but at least she just needed one encouraging word from them to breathe a little easier. But no, they could only give just another portion of senseless pity and fear, burying it under the ground. No spark of hope, so sound to look ahead boldly. The hell with it! She must stand it until the end of May, and then exams, thesis and it would be all over. Rey straightened up with even more stubbornness, avoiding looking into Dr. Chen's eyes.

“You can go, Miss Teedo,” the doctor sighed hopelessly. “And think about the work-up.”

“Yes, sir, I will. Goodbye.”

Rey closed the door behind her and leaned weakly against the cool wall. Despair rolled into her throat, causing a sharp, sour taste in her mouth. She wanted, like a little girl, to sit down in the middle of the corridor and cry. But it was impossible, she had no right to surrender at the finish line, no matter how much she wanted send everything and everybody packing. Having unstuck with some difficulty from the wall, Rey straightened up and walked towards the elevator. People can feel sorry for themselves endlessly, but it was much more difficult not to do it.

Professor Matsu's Computer Science Workshop was one of few classes where she could simply enjoy her studies. The teacher never overloaded them with tests or projects, emphasizing their consciousness. However, today every member of the group received a rather complex independent project in order to learn how to work in programs. Of course, this task caused serious moaning from students softened by compassionate attitude of the teacher.

“Did I miss something, or did the twenty-fifth hour appear in the day?” Mel complained.

They didn't have Ren's lecture today, so girl looked as usual. A broken stylus was settled in her hair again, torn jeans dangled on slender legs, and a baggy jacket hid no less voluminous hoodie. Constant transformations of female students from typical nerds to quack vamp women used to amuse Rey. But Professor Ren apparently found it quite cute. And meeting in the corridors with anyone in such incarnations, he talked with girls, almost squeaking with delight, with pleasure and even in his own way of gallantry. Their group all together walked along the corridor towards the exit from Compton Laboratory. It was located in an indifferent gray box, which even through the photo filters could not be compared with the architecture of the campus of Electronics Research Laboratory. The building where Rey spent her calculations seemed to be splashed out of the dubious fantasies of a futurist - a jagged roof over the main entrance and the walls themselves looked like a heap of a huge tinker toys.

“Holy positrons,” Ted, who was walking behind the inseparable trinity, Mel, Annette and Katherine, replied. “Have you forgotten where you are? You’re at MIT, where the total weight of the brains of the teaching staff is so is huge, that bends space and time*. You have to remember there are more than twenty-four hours in the day here and a short passage between the buildings is necessary perform in a hyper-jump. How did you finish your sixth year without this indispensable knowledge?”

“Oh, fuck off, Ted,” Annette said. “But seriously, I have no idea how to do everything. My graduation project looks suspiciously like uncertainty: I have no idea when or how I would finish it.”

“I have beaver away at homework tasks, the entire Christmas holidays instead of rest,” Catherine said.

“Calm down, ladies,” Ted's pale face flushed with pleasure. “I know how to make your life easier. At least in one of the items.”

He stopped abruptly, forcing everyone else to brake, and with a melodramatic gesture he took a silver flash memory card from his jacket pocket. It was suspiciously similar to...

“You’ve stolen it from Professor Matsu ?!” Rey could not believe her eyes.

“Not "stolen", just taken for a while, Teedo,” the guy was in a huff. “I’m going to copy everything and return it perfectly safe. He has classes in a double period at architects.

“Why did you do it?” She asked wearily.

“He has got not only our assignments there, but also the masterpieces of former graduates. Even if they do not coincide with those that he’d handed out today, then you can at least take them as a basis. It will be faster to complete the task.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw them today when he opened his laptop in front of me. He has folders called "Assignments", "Previous tests" and so on. The old man clearly used to keep everything in one place.”

“What are the chances that he won’t find the loss until the next lessons?”

“If everything is done quickly and without a hitch, he won’t notice,” with these words Jeffers walked over to one of the windowsills that ran along the corridor, and opened the laptop, which was carried under his armpit.

"I don't like this," Rey muttered.

“So, put aside the panic on board of this ship,” he chuckled smartly and inserted USB stick into the connector. Everyone surrounded the guy immediately, trying to see what was going on. Ted opened the file eplorer and hovered the cursor over the icon of the stick. The young man's eyes burned with the fire of a treasure hunter.

“Eureka moment!”

“Attention-seeker,” stocky Alan muttered with a laugh, almost nothing was visible to him. Double click and... And the system issued a window asking for a password.

“Oh shit!” Jeremy, standing next to, exclaimed in hearts, and Rey just clicked her tongue, without any idea how to relate to what had just happened. On the one hand, an example of someone's work wouldn’t certainly be superfluous, at least for calming of their own nerves. On the other hand, the fact, how her classmate decided to make it easier for himself, jarred life priorities unpleasantly.

“Don’t swear, Mr. Lee,” an old voice rasped behind them. And all ten people, like on cue, jumped in surprise. Rey turned abruptly to see Professor Matsu behind her. Bushy eyebrows of the old samurai were frowned, but his eyes glittered fun. “And I kept wondering whether you decide to do it or not?”

“Professor, I… don’t…” Ted tried to mumble something in his own defense, but couldn't think of anything. Rey bit her lip, trying not to laugh. The whole situation was so ridiculous that she was astonished by it. Soon-to-be certified masters of one of the most prestigious universities in the country and in the world stood like freshmen caught on a plagiarized homework.

“Would you mind if I take back my flash drive?” Matsu continued still calmly. “I’d like to work while the going is good”.

“Y-yes, of course, professor,'' Ted frantically tried to pull the ill-fated media out of the slot, but instead nearly dropped his laptop on floor. Finally, he managed to cope with the slippery metal body. “Here it is. I’m sorry.”

“It's all right, Mr. Jeffers. It's okay” the elderly teacher continued to smile blissfully, looking at the utterly embarrassed student. “Next time, just ask.”

“I beg my pardon?” Ted did not understand. To be honest, Rey didn't get it at the same moment what Matsu meant. But the following words amazed even those who did not listen much to conversation, shaking with fear of the possible consequences.

“Just ask for examples of work. It's not forbidden”, the professor shrugged and, turning, with slow shuffling steps, moved in the direction to the stairs. Awe silence reigned in the hallway. Finally, Lee came first to his senses, running his fingers through his brown hair.

“It's just a clusterfuck,” he gasped. It sounded almost like the trumpets of Doomsday from the mouth of such nerd.

“Shhhhh,'' Annette shouted at him and, to be sure, pushed the guy with her elbow in side. The professor was still not far enough away and it would be unpleasant for him to hear their talks. Finally, a slightly hunched back, pulled into an ordinary gray polo-neck sweater, disappeared on the staircase flight. There was the sound of a blow and offended scream.

“Damn, Mel! It hurts!” it seemed that the blonde had given Ted a slap upside his head.

“You're a complete idiot, Ted Jeffers! What if he goes now and reports on all of us to the dean?”

“Well, then the question "how to do everything in time" would disappear by itself,” the guy muttered rubbing his bruised head.

“No, what a moron!” Mel turned abruptly and rushed away along corridor.

“Rey,” Catherine called out to her concerned, “Do you think Matsu will report or not?

“I don’t think so.” She shook her head. “I suppose he deliberately provoked you, Ted.”

“It's uh bust... an old bastard!”

Rey could only roll her eyes. She really didn't believe that Professor Matsu would report on them. Finally, during a conversation she was the only one person who did not look at the floor and saw those eyes, full of malicious fun.

Hux's lab was flooded with students, and Rey was a little taken aback when she’s bursting in without knocking. It seemed like it's time to quit such behavior nothing good would definitely come up from such bad manners. In the back of the room, Phasma stooped down low, explaining something to the young guy at one of the computers. Judging what Rey saw on the monitors, students of the third year were suffering now. The PhD student turned to the sound of the opening door and nodded, smiling, at the office door. The professor was there. Trying not to attract too much attention to herself, Rey sneaked into the room for the opposite end of the lab.

“Ah! Here you are!” Hux looked rested. Apparently a trip to Dallas turned out to be extremely successful. He sat at his desk and worked on some a document.

“Welcome back, professor,” she smiled wryly, expecting disappointed looks from the doorway already. But instead her supervisor was typing on the computer something calmly and intently.

“Thank you. How was the progress tutorial?” he still wasn’t looking up from the monitor and couldn’t see how Rey turned pale.

“Um.”

She honestly tried to find words to describe what had happened. It was rough? Ill-mannered? Totally unacceptable? AND to be honest, it’s just disgusting of her... While Rey was indulging in reflections and memories of one of the most shameful days in her life, Hux finally looked up from work and looked at the student.

“Rey, are you okay? Kylo said he was too late and you hadn’t had enough time to discuss everything thoroughly. But he liked what he saw...”

What?! The ceiling swung forth and back and froze. Hux said something else, but she didn’t listen to him. Words about being late were rushing in her ears like a frightened owl. Who was late? Where? When?! Trying to grasp what was said, Rey forced herself to pay attention to the professor.

“…He was pleased with your work. Of course it wouldn't be Kylo, if he missed an opportunity to make a couple of edits. I'll show you where. Ren, as always, was dawned with new ideas already somewhere in the middle of another tutorial, and he hasn’t got your phone number. So, I have to try to convey his bright ideas to you,” Armitage grimaced. Rey tried to squeeze out a smile without realizing whether the muscles of the face obeyed or not.

So, Ren didn't say anything. Moreover, he lied deliberately to a friend, masterly inventing on the run that there wasn’t even a hint of what had happened. What for? Why did he do this? He had an amazing opportunity to take revenge on a stupid, presumptuous girl who was rude and insulted him, again bringing herself down into the fact-finding of personal life. Was he afraid his proposal to change the supervisor would pop up? God, it remained only to blame the professor being coward, and she would strike. It was funny, even ridiculous. The professor had no reason to hope for her discretion and courtesy, it was obvious that she would have rolled him over on Hux. Since she acted like a bitch with him, it was unlikely to stop it without him. And yet he lied. In inspirational way and resourcefully. He made up a story about his being late, not even Rey’s, he cleaned up the mess, pretending not to know her number. And what is she to do now? God ... And did Ren really have time to remember something in those pieces of code that flashed before his eyes at the flush speed? What fucking hell was he?..

“Rey?” it seemed it was not the first time Hux called her, trying to attract her attention.

“Sorry, professor, I was thinking to myself for a moment ...” if only he did not ask what she was thinking of… The brain waved the white flag and surrendered in disgrace. Rey couldn't think either of anything sensible or of telling the truth. She wasn’t crazy to commit an academic suicide. Fortunately, the teacher harkened to her mental supplications.

“Yes, I’ve got it already. Let me show you what Kylo said to change”.

She bent over for her laptop bag when she was overtaken by the following words:

“By the way, did you ask him about your problem with the bases?” Rey's hand trembled for a second, but then confidently, as if nothing had happened, fished out the metal case of the laptop.

“No... it didn’t even cross anyone’s mind”

_Sure thing._

“It's a pity, because we are short of time”

“I can handle it by myself, professor,” she said with pressure.

“I understand your professional pride, Rey”, Hux looked at her wearily. It seemed that he had already despaired of convincing suddenly so obstinate student to ease her life. “But you have to be a little more prudent, because you're still a student. The help of other teachers is natural, and Ren is the best in his...”

“That's not the point,” she said irritably, and immediately bit her tongue. Rey looked at her hands gripping a soulless piece aluminum, and thought about how to get out of a scrape now. “Not only in his professional qualities.”

“Then what?” green eyes stared at her in surprise, waiting for explanations. But Rey kept silent, having no idea how to explain everything that happened between her and Professor Ren. And was it worth it at all? It was a nice tangle both of them had made of it already that Rey was indecently ashamed to admit the one at least.

“The respect of a man like Professor Ren is no small feat”, she began to make up as goes along. For the first time, Rey regretted she had no idea about ability to fable like others. “I had the opportunity to get acquainted with his...”

“What exactly did you read?” Hux interrupted her unexpectedly abruptly and quickly, and now it was Rey’s turn to look at the teacher in surprise. He looked definitely nervous. What was going on?

“Well...” she was confused. “I came across several articles that were freely available. I watched his TED talk performance...”

Rey watched with even more perplexity as the professor relaxed. Wow... it seemed she's not the only one who had something to hide in the past. Holy God, this was intriguing!

“Yes, Kylo did great then,” Hux ruffled his hair, smiling at some memories. “But, after that such a panic wave arose in the mass media because of the imaginary awareness of the population ... Well, you know, everyone hadn’t cared about it, until everybody’s nose was rubbed in it. So the Pentagon even tried to place a ban on his public presentations and withdraw of all recordings.”

“Seriously?” Her eyebrows went up. “And what was the upshot of it all?”

The man laughed and shook his head.

“The same as usual. This video was shown in Times Square for 24 hours. As you can suppose, after that any further actions were being meaningless.”

“And he got away with it? He did it, didn't he?”

“Of course he did.” A wide grin appeared on the pale face. Hux deftly steered the conversation away from his suspicious questions. “I do not deny, his sense of humor is specific, but he does his job. Kylo has a rather specific relationship with defenders. They need each other, they know about it, and therefore they are overwhelmed by mutual hatred. Up to eighty percent of all their grants go to Ren by tacit agreement, in return he disclaims any further claims on his inventions and solutions.”

“Sheer slavery!” Rey whispered in shock. “It's a product of intellectual activity, the pride of any scientist!”

“He cares not a snap for their pennywise vanity”, Hux threw his hands behind his head and leaned back on the high back of his work chair. “Ren strongly believes that ideas cannot be kept to one person, they must be shared. And he does not care at all whose name the patent will be registered for”.

“Art for art's sake”.

“Exactly,” the man stretched out with a crunch. “So, let me show you what you need re-make”.

Rey opened her laptop and Hux plunged into lengthy explanations, trying to convey clearly a meaningful thought of Professor Ren in his own words. Surprisingly, she perfectly understood what he suggested to change. Rey looked at her code and wondered how she hadn’t stumbled upon the idea before?

October 31st was dry, sunny and unexpectedly almost frosty like in winter. In the cold air, breath stuck ghostly like a cloud of fog, slowly dissipating in the light morning wind. Rey sat in Sebastian's coffee shop, located opposite the David Koch Institute for Cancer Research, having placed a glass of juice on the Koch brochure about the dangers of smoking, and made a paper airplane from a napkin with a corporate logo: "Koch cafe". The room, on the holiday occasion, was decorated with crooked bats and plastic pumpkins. But Rey's thoughts were far from cheerful students humming in the bistro. Hux's reaction and the strange, worried question that followed had haunted her mind for two days. After coming home, Rey tried again to find any information about Kylo Ren. But she attained only an high level of being “somuched”. After an hour of searching, there was a feeling that, without a doubt, the since childhood gifted professor was conscious of his exceptional nature only at the age of sixteen. Exactly at this age, the first mentions of his name took place in newspaper reports as new city champion in sports programming, prize winner of MIT Youth Award etc. Then Ren came in sight quite regularly, plastering here and there at various competitions and conferences. And the older he became, the more noticeable his success became. But everything that had happened to him till sixteen years old-period, was wrapped in mystery. Rey even though involuntarily whether another apple had fallen on the professor's head, once the obsession for programming had woken up so suddenly. However, she immediately dismissed such thoughts. In America, a bunch of programs would have been immediately shot, like the one that told the story of a polyglot girl who experienced a clinical death. No, the issue was about something else. And besides there was also the mysterious Ben Solo, who emerged like lost twin brother from Indian cinema. Every time she tried to dig into a little deeper, then she bumped into his name. It's a pity there were no pictures of this brother, and that was strange too. Mr. Solo had disappeared from any reports a year before Ren's appearance in them. But this wasn’t a big surprise, a going through a phase of an awkward age is a subtle matter.

And now Rey was sitting in a coffee shop and looking once again through a news compilation of twenty years ago, when the ubiquitous Ted nestled next to her.

“What are you doing here?” She asked without looking up from luminous screen.

“Teedo, are you blind?” the guy looked at her in amazement and raised his hands to heaven in a prayer gesture. “Break free from the Matrix and give a glance at the works of God!”

Seeing the misunderstanding on the face of a classmate, he silently got up, walked around from behind and turned her head with both hands in the direction of the large panoramic windows, that completely replaced one of the walls. In front of them the Main Street was flooded with sunlight, cars were parked there along the street. In the next instant, Rey felt her palms immediately sweaty, because one of these cars was to bloody tears familiar black matte monster. Apparently, the professor had just arrived. She saw the side lights went out and one of the strange winged doors was opened.

“I fucking like this car”, Ted whispered beside her, who was watching with acute fascination too what was happening on the street.

Rey wanted to tell something, but then Ren's Atlantean figure appeared. He stood half-turned with a perfectly straight back, lazily lowering the door. A watch flashed unexpectedly on his right hand, and his carelessly styled hair seemed completely black in the contrasting shadows of the young trees. He was dressed in one of his identical mind-blowing costumes. Rey noticed a black sweater instead of a shirt, which appeared only cause of cold weather. He looked... well, amazing. There were leather gloves In his hands, which Ren pulled on immediately, shrugging his shoulders from cool wind. With a careless gesture he took off his sunglasses and hid them in the chest pocket.

“Stop salivating,” a quiet, mocking voice came next to her. Rey shook her head as if returning from a distant galaxy. Was she ... just staring at her professor with her mouth opened like idiot classmates? What a shame! The attentive Ted, of course, did not miss opportunities to pin up a friend: “Wow. Even Teedo, the salt of the earth, could not resist the burning depravity and something fluttering there.”

“Shut up,” she grumbled, burying herself back into her laptop and trying to hide her confusion. “There is no need to stare at _you_.”

“That statement could not be much clearer... I wonder what he is doing here so early?”

“Believe it or not, what do I care?”

"But it's even better." Ted didn't listen to her, absorbed in his ideas.

“So, Teedo, we need to reach out to someone!”

“What?”

“Hack, Teedo, hack!” he looked at her as if she were a complete idiot. Well, she probably looked like this, while staring at her teacher with her mouth opened. But then Ted's words finally reached the mind still clouded by hormones.

“You’ve meant it for real!” Rey was stunned. “I thought you’ve been kidding.”

“Naive and ingenuous,” the guy sighed and brought the phone to his ear. “Hey, Sam! The object is onsite, you can start... Yes... On Main Street, opposite the Sebastian coffee shop. OK, I'm waiting for you here. He disconnected, and Rey looked at him and couldn't believe anything.

“You’re a sick moron,” she drawled, either enthusiastically or surprised.

“Sit down at the lecture closer to the window, there would be the coolest view,” he answered and winked her instead. Rey packed her things rather than participate in such slapstick comedy that was going to take place here from minute to minute, and headed to the bioengineering lab. She had a very bad feeling about the coming shit.

Annoyed and frustrated with another program failure, Rey walked into the class room and glanced angrily at Ted, who was making signals cheerfully. The guy settled down at the largest window and kindly pointed to an empty chair. Resigned to the inevitability, she sat down next to him, reaching notebook and opening laptop.

“When will this happen?” She asked under breath.

“Closer to the end,” the guy responded just as quietly. Rey wanted to clarify what end he meant, but she did not have time. The door to the lecture hall opened, admitting Mel and Annette, Ren came in next, and the class began. It seemed to her that the torture of the unknown was dragging on forever. She glanced at the top right corner of the screen every now and then, checking how much time was left till the end of the lecture nightmare. Rey tried to put a brave face on it as usual, but the gazes thrown at her by the professor, did not inspire optimism for some reason. Although, it could not be ruled out that this was all the result of her panicking brain. But now, five minutes before the end of the class, the screen of Ted's laptop blinked, and then the message disappeared immediately. And almost instantly from the side the lecturer's desk a standard sms sound signal was heard.

“I beg your pardon,” Ren interrupted his explanation, reaching for the already familiar to Rey phone and peering at the screen. The professor froze for one difficult minute, looking over and over again to the message. And not a muscle in his face flinched when the phone in his hands was buzzing again. Finally, Ren looked up from the contemplation of the unknown text, turned off the sound and put the device on the table.

“Signal,” Ted said with his lips, but Rey understood.

Of course, such a car must have a satellite alarm system, and now the professor was inundated with automatic messages. Something unknown was happening to the car. To their teacher's credit, he completely ignored the silently flashing phone screen, calmly returning to the lecture. Rey thought already that everything would come to the end now, but how cruelly she was wrong. Almost crying out in fright, when Ted's sharp elbow hit the ribs, she turned to the guy, and froze. Another gaze in her direction remained unnoticed. The performance coming outside the window was shocking in its scale. Even with on the first floor, where the class room was located, everything was clearly visible. Eyes wide with shock, Rey watched as Ren’s car slowly was floating by, almost without touching the wheels of the ground. But this was not terrifying at all. A multi-voiced gasp was heard in the audience, drawing the teacher's attention to yourself. The lecture was interrupted by itself. Like a single organism, the heads of fellow students turned to the side of large windows, and the first chuckle ran through the rows. Being unable to hold back, Rey glanced at Ren. He slowly walked to the window opening and watched the show. His face was calm, only a black eyebrow shot up in surprise up.

Meanwhile, the car had reached the distance where the structure above it was fully visible. And Rey could barely contain her nervous laughter. Proudly and dignified, high in the air and strictly above the roof of the car Darth Vader's giant mask hovered. The huge balloon was so large that it covered the entire width of the street between campuses. Around it smaller balls in the form of imperial fighters and countless Death Stars hovered at different heights. There were so many of them that the whole colossus looked like a moving black and steel monster. But then a strange procession stopped in front of the main entrance to the Fairchild building. Under loud laughter and the hooting of the whole street scarlet the inscription, clearly made with the aid of a laser light installation: “Your shuttle given, Lord Vader!" lit up on the black matt side of the Mercedes.

The laughter of passers-by reached them even through the tightly closed plastic window. Rey suppressed a smile with a titanic effort and looked around. Only Melanie, Annette and Catherine did not laugh, apparently being aware whose car it was. The girls were riding to light panic. She turned her head again, admiring the fantastic sight. Nearby, Ted was splitting his sides with laughter.

“The show is over. See you on Monday,” Ren's indifferent voice came suddenly.

He turned away from the window, slowly glancing around at the students and holding attention to Rey. The feeling of close violence arose inside again, but she calmly looked into his eyes. For a while they “played” their staring contest, but then Ren was the first to break contact, picking up the phone from the table. Rey exhaled and began to pack her bag, noting that everybody had been found themselves on the street, staring at the new Massachusetts hack.

“Okay, see you at the party,'' Ted whispered to her and ran away from lecture hall. Rey was already putting her coat over her shoulders when she was stopped.

“Miss Teedo, please stay”.

Heart fluttered and fell down to the knees, giving no signs of life. Her legs suddenly became like wadded, and her ears were ringing, but she calmly straightened her tousled hair, grabbed her bag and walked over to the professor. The familiar scent covered her again, taking her thoughts away. Rey made careful inhale before opening her mouth.

“Yes, sir?” She looked at him inquiringly and almost staggered back. Under the furious gaze of the professor, the walls were melting, and feigned indifference was crumbling like cracked paint. Inattentively, she heard the last student closed the door and it became very quiet.

For a while, he silently destroyed her nerve cells, then crossed arms on his chest and sat on the edge of his desk. Apparently, Ren wanted them the eyes were on the same level, but still he was too tall.

"Miss Teedo," he began evenly, without showing hell fires raging inside him. “I know that you are involved in this misunderstanding. And therefore, so far, in an amicable way, I’m asking to tell me the names of participants”.

He waved his hand towards the window, and Rey glanced involuntarily at the head of the Dark Lord swaying in the wind.

“May I know, sir, what your confidence is based on?” she stared at the teacher with a grin. Did he seriously believe that such ephemeral accusations would work with Rey?

“I don’t have to explain this to you,” he growled, unhooking his hands and squeezing right palm into a fist. It seemed that the professor Ren’s patience was rapidly leaving, and the first poisonous tongues of danger crept upward.

“Nor do I consider myself obligated to tell you anything, sir. You are mistaken in thinking that you could intimidate me” she held out still sarcastically. “Even if you can prove...”

But she wasn’t done with it, when Ren was one step next to her, breaking away with a sharp rush from the table. The fingers grabbed her chin roughly, forcing her to lift her head and look into almost black eyes. And so now Rey felt to overtaken by fear. Even the sensible thought that the professor wouldn’t be willing to kill in the walls of the educational institution, could not drown out the panic. Ren could wring her neck with one hand and he seemed very close to this now. Rey twitched, but to no avail. She achieved nothing only the hairpin flew to the floor with a plaintive crack, and the rebellious curls immediately entangled a man's hand.

“I don’t care what you think, Miss Teedo,” he hissed, giving no attention to the hair in his way. “I won't let anyone make a jester of me. Names!”

“Deal with your teenage angst by yourself, professor, and keep me out of this”, she responded quite venomously, overcoming sticky fear.

“Names, Miss Teedo.” His cold voice broke into her brain.

“I. Do. Not. Know”.

The jaw was already starting to hurt under his fingers, but Rey did not give up either. Not only cause of pure stubbornness. Ren looked away for a second, give a twisted and terrible grin, and then he stared at her again.

“You are such a liar, Miss Teedo. Although, you are used to it. You managed to lie even when testifying in the Platt’s case” he said insinuatingly and slowly, and Rey felt a cold drop of sweat rush down her spine. Horror squeezed her heart, causing an aching pain, but she did not pay attention to it. How did he find out?! How could he even figure it out? But the professor did not stop there, going in for kill with the next phrase. “On the top of that there is the fact how in an expert manner you destroyed evidence by hacking into the Boston police archives. Was the biography of Unkar Puatt a danger to him? You would be very, very bad nun.”

“How do you know?” she whispered, feeling the tongue did not obey her, and treacherous tears accumulate in the corners of her eyes.

“Names!” he ignored the question. Rey suddenly felt like a response wave of anger rose inside, forcing to respond with aggression to aggression.

“And I thought that you have already hit an all-time low, professor. But I am surprised at you – you’ve stooped to blackmail and intimidation?

“Names!”

"I don't know who did it," Rey said quickly. “But even if I was aware of it, you obviously won’t...”

“One word, and you will fly out of the university faster than you can tell Hux tales about it! NAMES!”

He was yelling at her. Tears of pain and humiliation still rolled down her cheeks, and she felt as Ren erased the wet mark with the thumb of his other hand, The gesture came out soft. And Rey gave up. Her physical and emotional strength were not enough for stupid and useless resistance. Pushing offended pride and guilt to hell, she said:

“Ted Jeffers. Someone else helped him, but I don't know them” Rey felt like a scum, betraying a friend. But everything was already too… everything was too much.

The painful grip disappeared, and the professor took a step back, moving away from her.

“You see, you can be a good girl whenever you want,” he said softly. Rey suddenly felt like she was given a spin.

“Go to hell, professor,” she exclaimed, wiping away the rolling tears.

“You are a big child, whose bloated ego is visible even from orbit. It was all just an innocent joke”.

“I won’t let anyone to make me a laughing stock,” Ren replied calmly collecting papers from the table.

“Well, then go and jerk off to your image of a knight in shining armor, and leave me in alone!” her scream must be heard even in the corridor, but Rey didn't care. Grabbing her bag, she flew out of the class room with a loud slam of the door.

__________________

* Ted talks about general relativity, where every body possessing large mass, bends space-time around itself.


End file.
